


His Constellations' Chance

by stereokem



Category: Kingsman: The Secret Service (2015)
Genre: Angst, Coma, Emotionally complicated situations, M/M, Merlin POV, POV First Person, Rating will go up, Slow Build, Supermassive Black Angst
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-02-02
Updated: 2018-01-22
Packaged: 2018-05-16 05:18:31
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 8
Words: 47,413
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5815684
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/stereokem/pseuds/stereokem
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>If equal affection cannot be, let the more loving one be me. </i>
</p><p> </p><p>-</p><p>On the third day since Eggsy left, I bring a shaving kit with me to Harry’s room.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. A Lesson in Trajectory

**Author's Note:**

> Fair warning: this is going to hurt.

There are security cameras everywhere around our headquarters.

Most of them are not immediately obvious. We are the most technologically advanced spy organization on the globe, and have evolved all method and manner of undetectable security measures. The cameras sprinkled throughout HQ—in the hallways, offices, training rooms, etc. – are discreet. Many resemble nothing more interesting than thumb-tack, stuck randomly up in some high corner. If you don’t know what you are looking for, you won’t see it. Once you become aware of what they are, however, you see them everywhere.

In my youth, when I was an agent-in-training, I found this particular security measure moderately unnerving. I joined Kingsman in the late eighties, having been recruited from the sheltered environment of Oxford. It was an odd sensation to become used to, knowing that I was being watched – or that someone had the ability to watch me at any given moment. Within these walls and on these grounds, I nor anyone else could make a move without being held under potential scrutiny. At the time, it seemed to show a remarkable lack of trust in personnel. It was as if Kingsman expected its agents to become turncoat.

It was only later that I understood that the security cameras are in place to catch not agents, but outsiders. Granted, outsiders make their way into UKHQ about as often as agents go rogue—perhaps once every three decades.  HQ is a veritable fortress and nearly undetectable; it is a living thing, growing and constantly being improved upon. As for agents, our interview process ensures that anyone with a weak character is weeded out. With these measures in place, having an excess of security cameras seems unwarranted; however, we prefer to err on the side of caution, and so the cameras stay.

As with anything else, one grows accustomed to them. As a trainee, I put them out of mind, and paid them next to no heed. Now, having been in the service for over two decades, they are almost a comforting fact.

There are security cameras everywhere around our headquarters.

There are cameras in the medical division. There are cameras in the operating rooms.

Even here, I can understand the necessity. They serve much the same purpose as the inter-room windows, the large expanses of bullet-proof glass without curtains or blinds that allow doctors, nurses, and surgeons unfettered views of their patients. Perhaps this does seem in excess. However, as little privacy as there is anywhere else, there is absolutely none and no illusion of it in the trauma ward.

When you give yourself to Kingsman, you give up your privacy. Kingsman becomes the only private thing about you, and it is kept private from the outside world. Within our organization, however, everything about you is exposed. This is especially true for agents, for Knights. As a Knight, your body, for however long it functions, belongs to Kingsman. All intimacies are irrelevant in the face of loss of life and value as an asset.

So, yes, I understand the necessity. And it is both a blessing and a burden; because it means that, later, when some frail sense of order has been restored and I am sitting in my office alone, I can pull up the camera feed from Operating Room 4. I can pull up the video from six hours earlier and watch when a team of medics wheel a bandaged, bloody, and deathly still body into the room.

There is not much to see. A battalion of doctors and nurses form a wall around him, all moving to-and-fro, frenetic like a group of piranhas attacking a small carcass. Everyone has a hand on something, in something, holding something, handing something off. Someone changes gloves every few minutes. There is a great deal of blood.

I know the call—I _saw_ it happen, through his very own glasses. _Gunshot wound._ What I did not know until now: _non-fatal._

We had . . . we had all been so certain that he died. _I_ had been certain. There was blood spattered on his glasses and all the readings I was receiving from his vitals had flat-lined. He died. I _saw_ him.

But he didn’t.

We can thank divine providence, I suppose, that Valentine was a bloody awful shot—or perhaps just gunshy. I’ve read the medical report; Valentine couldn’t have been looking  right at him. The bullet entered next to his temple, and instead of penetrating into his cranium, the trajectory lead it in a stuttering, swerving path along the outside of his skull, stopping just a few centimeters behind his left ear. Intracranial bleeding, some swelling. Neurological damage, if any, undetermined.

Fuck. While I was flying a jet to the Swiss Alps to let two children save the world, Harry Hart was lying prone in an operating room in headquarters, bleeding out.

It was the right thing, I know. Rationally, I _know_. Had we not gone to stop Valentine, it would have scarcely mattered whether or not he lived. We unquestionably did the right thing, the necessary thing. We had no reason to believe Harry was alive; an extraction team had been sent to recover his body, and that was that. We couldn’t have known. We did the right thing.

I watch the entire operation. I play it back at a speed only slightly faster than normal, and it takes me less than an hour.

In the first half of the video, they staunch the flow of bloody from Harry’s head. They shave the side of his head carefully, neatly, debriding and cleaning the area of the wound. In the old days, and even in some special cases now, we would leave bullets in the body; a stationary bullet does no harm, but taking it out can do very serious damage. They remove a small, shiny object from the side of his skull. In the second half comes the pain-staking process of sewing him up. They wipe him down with antiseptic, inspect the wound from which the bullet was dug. Then there is only the glint of a long, curved needle as it dives in and out of his scalp. They wrap him in bandages, pristine white gauze; they have done well to stop the bleeding; they won’t need to change it for another few hours.   

I keep holding my breath at various intervals. I don’t know why—I know the outcome, but I feel the suspense tightening like a metal wire inside me, shrieking with potential energy and electricity.

In the end, he lives. They secure his bandages, and wheel him gently out. Harry Hart lives.

It is that kind of movie, after all.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm going to do my best to update this story weekly or biweekly, but I'm going to let you know ahead of time that this schedule may not hold. I'm interviewing for graduate schools this upcoming month, and it won't leave me a whole lot of time for writing/editing. But cheers in advance to those of you who will remain patient.
> 
> Also, you should totally check out my music and tell me how weird I am.  
> www.soundcloud.com/neurokem


	2. Composition of Care

It’s a madhouse.

Kingsman is a beehive, a nest full of drones and workers, all frantic bodies moving back and forth, signaling to one another, trying to function as a cohesive unit. We are trying to pick up the pieces of a world that has been shaken by a certain degree of genocide, by a brief flash of violence, and by the sudden deaths of many powerful leaders. Countries and nations are at a loss, and it is our task to help right the world, to be an unseen hand.

I am in the thick of it.

I am glad to be so busy, frankly, even if it means the world has run amok. It’s comforting, in its way. I have always preferred to be preoccupied with almost more than I can handle, rather than be teetering on the edge of boredom or lassitude; in this case, the chaos is a benediction, and not because I dread ennui.

I am corresponding directly with the head of the French office. I made contact with France almost immediately after landing, knowing full well what we were walking into—what _I_ was walking into.

Though our UK office is the original branch and thus command central, there are seven principal satellites of Kingsman dispersed around the globe. UKHQ is the only office that maintains the Round Table system, and so there is only one Arthur who is, for all intents and purposes, King and Control. However, the directors of the other satellite offices act as councilmen to Arthur, especially in times of distress. In extreme circumstances, a unanimous vote among the directors can overrule Arthur or remove him from office.

It seems a precarious system, to be sure, and it would most certainly be thus if Kingsman were any other agency. But we only recruit the best, the most dispassionate, logical, egalitarian thinkers. We have flukes, occasionally, such as Chester King; but, for the most part, our leaders operate under the strict rules of harmony, and dissent is rare. Arthur has never been removed from office since the inception of this agency because the directors understand their role, understand Arthur’s role, and know that the balance of power should not be over-turned unless in dire circumstances.

These, as it happens, are dire.

This is partly why I have requested assistance from France. According to protocol, when Arthur passes or retires, the most senior Knight takes his place. This would have been Gawain the 4th; however, because Gawain died during the V-Day fiasco, the title then fell to Galahad the 5th, Harry Hart. This is where the line stops. After the second most senior agent, it is the resident Merlin who takes command as Acting Arthur.

In Kingsman, undue promotions are never a good thing.

Furthermore, I knew better than to put myself in that position, at least immediately. The technicalities of being Arthur are no mystery to me; I know all protocols in and out, and can even emulate the way another Arthur—Chester, Gawain, or Galahad—might think. I am not partial to leadership roles, at least not ones with so much power, but I am capable.

Generally. 

Given all that has happened, however, I am trying not to overestimate my ability to maintain.

So, I contacted France. They are the oldest Kingsman satellite and, consequently, the closest office to us. I am in nearly constant communication with the director, a man in his late fifties who goes simply by Demarais. Demarais acts as my deputy: I am doling out some responsibility to him, and I consult with him on matters that I deem necessary. By a technicality I enacted when I gave Demarais this responsibility, the authority (though not the title) of Arthur now is now shared by both Demarais and I. Consequently, the French office now also shares the status of mothership/flagship of Kingsman. This feels somewhat strange, for the London office to no longer be the only command centre; however, it is necessary for the moment, and to me a welcome reprieve. For the moment, it is easier for me to act as Arthur knowing that I have another mind tackling the same problems, from whom I can seek perspective and council. It is not nearly ideal, and sometimes creates disagreement that is not readily settled; but Demarais respects me—immensely, if reports are to be believed— and will defer to my judgement when I choose to put my foot down. 

It is the second day after V-Day, and I am taking long strides down one of the first-floor hallways on the east side of the building, listening to a stream of French rushing through my ear-piece. Demarais is relaying his intentions to orchestrate a bombing; he has a flat way of speaking that belies his years of military training. I listen carefully, nodding assent to myself. Demarais is good; he is efficient, which would make for a decent Arthur, but excessively harsh in some ways, which wouldn’t. It is, perhaps, exactly what we need right now. For my part, I am thankful at least once every half hour that my own French is impeccable, as Demarais sometimes slurs his speech when he is speaking too quickly—which is to say, basically all of the time.

I turn a corner sharply and give the affirmative to Demarais, after which I convey that I am comming out. I do this just as I pass Kay. Codename Kay (real name Andrew Waite) is a well-coiffed young man with ghostly blonde hair and a perpetually icy (if still subservient) expression. He was a ballistics technician and clerk in R&D before Chester defected (and died). I made him my personal assistant yesterday. He’s taking to the change in position rather well.

(At least _someone_ is.)

Still signing off with Demarais, I hand Kay my tablet and sign to him instructions. The young blonde man nods and is gone in another instant.

It is only when I am exiting the elevator on Basement Level 1 that I am able to finally take my ear piece out. There is a sigh hovering in my lungs; I know that if I let it loose, I will feel it in my entire body. Fucking Christ, I’m tired.

This is all such a terrible sodding mess. The world has almost literally been torn to pieces and I am running around like a madman, getting no sleep, eating little, trying with every moment to put things to right. I have dispatched agents all over the world, have sent them on assignments that ask them to work against their natures. Since its inception, the mission of Kingsman has been to steer the world towards better—by preventing things from happening. We prevent war, prevent assassination, prevent massacre, prevent deals from being struck and despots rising to power. We send agents out to kill people, to flip switches, to cause accidents, to gather intelligence, to alter the course of history in the making away from disaster.

Alas, here we have disaster, though this catastrophe is different from anything we had predicted. This requires us not only to prevent things from happening, but to encourage them as well. I have agents around the globe encouraging peace talks, setting up alliances, diplomacy, and, in some cases, causing strategic disagreements between parties that should not be making peace. Some of this is definitely outside of our element; I have to wonder how badly we are botching it.

There are times when I think that we should withdraw, simply let the world battle it out, establish a new normal on its own.

That would never do, though. Oh, the world would continue to turn, surely—the world doesn’t _need_ Kingsman. Civilized society, however, does. Like it or not, realize it or not, civilization as we now know it depends on Kingsman the way babes depend on their mums.

So, we will continue to pull strings, act as the metaphorical unseen puppeteer for this joke of a marionette show—but that _isn’t_ quite the metaphor, is it? Our aim is not to control the world, like a puppet-master, but to ensure those that do won’t make a complete muck of it.

In this way, I suppose we’re more like a set of training wheels on a bicycle, or bumpers in a bowling lane, mainly here to prevent teetering or gutterballs.

And, with that criterion, one has to wonder: how do we know we’ve failed? What qualifies as a gutterball?

The most prominent example I can think of is lying unconscious in the infirmary, seventy meters from me.

Kingsman medical department is located on Basement Level 1 and is designed like a reptilian heart, three-chambered. Down the left hallway is the trauma and emergency medicine wing, relatively quiet today. Down the right is the outpatient ward, for biannual physicals and physical therapy for those who need it. And down the center hallway is the inpatient ward and non-emergency operating rooms. 

It is this hallway that I stride down, my footsteps quick and sharp on the high-gloss flooring. There is no reason for my brisk pace except that this is how I always walk now, the first few days after Valentine’s debacle having thrown everyone into overdrive. I walk quickly because that is the speed at which things need to be dealt with; but not this.

There is no “quickly” in this.

B029. The penultimate door on the right, currently ajar.

As I approach, a figure clad in a white coat steps out and closes the door gently behind. The figure turns; it is Caffrey, our chief neurologist. Caffrey spots me and waits for my quick stride to bring us close enough for speech.

When I draw near, I can see Caffrey’s expression perfectly, and I know exactly what it means.

“Bad news first,” I say in lieu of greeting.

Caffrey appraises me with quiet hazel eyes. We need no greeting. For all that we profess to be gentlemen (and women), this is an agency, not a charm school. In any case, Caffrey has seen enough of me in the last three days that we could very well be on a first-name basis— but I haven’t used such a thing in a very long time. It seems especially useless to start now.

“His intracranial pressure hasn’t fallen as much as we’d like,” Caffrey relates evenly, “I’m recommending putting him in a medically-induced coma.”

I think my blood must freeze in my veins. _Coma. God_.

“Is that . . . ” I swallow hard. _Fuck_. “Is that the best course of action?”

Caffrey nods once. “In my professional opinion, yes. We’ve put him on mannitol, but there is still an alarming amount of swelling, considering it’s been forty hours. If we induce a coma, it will put less stress on his body as a whole— and it will matter less if his brain cannot get an adequate supply of blood. From there, we can try to get the swelling under control. I’d rather not have to cut into his skull; it’s sustained enough damage as is.”

I know. I looked at the x-rays, saw the tiny bits of bone that were removed from his skull. He was so lucky. So lucky.

So bloody foolish.

“And . . . the good news?” I am almost afraid to ask.

“The rest of his vitals are decent. We’re keeping the wound very clean, so he has no chance of infection. We’re also preparing to implement the new polymer technology to graft more bone-like tissue onto his skull so that he doesn’t have a weak spot; the polymer has adhesed remarkably well in clinical tests. I believe there is still hope for him.”

That last sentence clings to the air like taffy, sticky and almost offensive; but I find myself unable to say anything in response to it. We aren’t in the business of hope, though I know that I don’t need to remind Caffrey. In his youth, Caffrey had been a field medic with the RAMC; now, as a matured physician with hair greying into white, his rank and specialty emblazoned on the upper-arm of his coat, there is no mistaking him for a tenderfoot.

His optimism, however, is somewhat damnable. Perhaps it’s simply a facet of his bedside manner.

I incline my head at the door to B029. “I suppose it won’t matter, then, if I go in and have a sit?”

Caffrey clicks a pen idly in his pocket and the corner of his mouth turns almost imperceptibly downward; he is not a fan of my thinly-veiled pessimism. When he replies, it is as if he heard an entirely different question.

“No stopping you, certainly—but you’ll have to tolerate some company.”

Caffrey smiles at me then, and it’s supposed to be a smile of shared knowledge, of indulgence towards something or someone. Maybe it is even supposed to be warming. For me, all it does is cause a heavy weight to sink to the bottom of my empty stomach.

I nod once. “Thank you.”

Caffrey returns the nod and moves past me to walk down the hallway. I don’t watch him go, but wait until his footsteps have faded somewhat before I take those last few steps, punch in my access code, and open the door.

 

 **-KM-**  

 

I stay only for a few minutes.

I would linger—I want to— but I don’t. Being alone in a room with Eggsy is not easy for me at the moment. Nor is it advisable.

When the door opens, the boy lifts his head up from where he had pillowed it on his folded arms, on the bed. The bed where Harry’s body lies, warm but still as a corpse.

Looking at Eggsy is not easy for me, but looking at Harry even less so; I choose the lesser of two evils.

Eggsy has barely left the room for days—three days. All the days since Harry had been brought in by emergency medical evac team (KEME), barely alive but for a faint heartbeat and breath that seemed slip its own accord in and out of his lungs. When they wouldn’t let him into the room directly after Harry’s surgery, he waited around outside, slumped up against the wall next to the door. I’m surprised anyone let him in at all, actually. I never gave sanction. If I were a crueler man—or, rather, if times were different—someone would have lost their job over this. Perhaps more. It makes my skin crawl with anger.

Eggsy’s eyes are bloodshot and glistening. There are tiny pinpricks of red under his brow, burst capillaries, and his face is white. He’s got a bit of stubble rowing and his hair looks a dirty, oily wreck. His clothes are rumpled—good god. He’s still wearing the same tuxedo.

When he raises his focus to me, Eggsy’s mouth twists into a facsimile of a smile, a sad and almost slightly demented thing that is only ever toted out by those who are trying to be chipper but know they are failing miserably at it.

I can’t even make my mouth twitch in response.

The parody of a smile slides from Eggsy’s face. His mouth quivers, as if he is about to speak, but he says nothing.

My feet feel leaden. I am having trouble taking any further steps into the room.

I disguise this failing by stepping to the side of the door and leaning against the wall. I cross my arms. Eggsy needs to leave. I want him to leave. What good does he think he is doing, wallowing here next to a man who is all but dead? Why is he crying, why now? Why _now_ , and not before? He could go bum a princess without conscious when he thought Harry was really dead, but now that he is alive Eggsy is holding vigil by his bed and weeping. I have so many questions to this, accusations, but I won’t dare utter any of them. That would be cruel.

(I can be. Cruel, that is. If I need to.)

Eggsy turns his gaze back to Harry. I know that if I allow myself to go completely still and quiet, I would cease to exist. I would become one more of the long shadows cast by the single lamp, would blend into the wall. There is an expression on Eggsy’s face, a look in his eyes, one that I recognize very well. I have been trying not to recognize it, attempting to not acknowledge it. I don’t want to know.

(But I do. I do. It cannot be helped.)

Before I leave, I say to Eggsy:

“I’m going to ask the nurse to ring some food in. Please eat it.”

 

**-KM-**

 

I have slept about four hours in as many days. It is starting to wear on me.

I can almost feel myself beginning to come apart. I drink my fifth cup of coffee that day (excessive, yes) and try not to pay attention to the little electric shocks that ping through my nervous system and make my fingers twitch. It feels as if I am short-circuiting. My mind feels surprisingly clear. I am lucid, or at least I feel as much. But my body is threatening to give out on me.

I need rest. A solid six hours of sleep, some proper nutrition. A bit of exercise wouldn’t hurt. A shower, although I just took one seven hours ago.

I need to slow down. Take a breath. Close my eyes. Stop.

There is a light tapping on my desk.

I snap back to attention. My errant cup of coffee has frozen half-way to my mouth; I look up past the cup, blinking blearily.

Kay is standing before me, pocketing his mini-tablet and stylus. He looks concerned, and it’s an unusual expression on the normally gelid young man. When he sees that he’s caught my attention, he signs to me.

_Are you all right, sir? Do you have anything else for me?_

I sigh and set down my cup so that both my hands are free to sign. Though Kay can hear perfectly well, I try to sign with him when the time and situation permits; it seems polite.

_I am fine. No, that will be all for now._

Kay nods in that short, definitive way he has. He looks as if he is about to leave, but then makes several quick gestures with his hands, almost unsure.

_Will you be going home today?_

“No.” The reply exits my mouth so fast I forget to sign it.

But Kay only inclines his head without changing expression, as if this does not surprise him. _You should at least get some sleep._

I must look devastatingly awful if my assistant is telling me to get some sleep. Christ. . . . though I suspect there have been many people with whom I’ve interacted today who were itching to say the same. Kay has simply been the only one ballsy (or simply uncaring) enough to voice the thought. If anyone else were to comment, it would be a taboo; for Kay, it is only overstepping a slight boundary.

 _Thank you_ , I sign, _I will_.

Kay looks as though he doesn’t believe me in the slightest, but he nods as if the act of making a false promise is enough. He turns heel and lets himself out of the office. The door closes behind him without a sound.

Once again, I wrap my fingers around the handle of my coffee cup. I bring it to my mouth, swallow mechanically. I must have awful breath, tannins fermenting in my mouth for hours, for days on end. I’ll have to brush and rinse for ages to get the taste out of under my tongue. For now, however, it serves a purpose: to keep me awake, to pucker my taste-buds and make my pulse quicken, call my overtaxed body to attention.

A wave of exhaustion hits me just after the initial rush of my caffeine high. Vertigo accompanies, sweeping through my body like a sudden gust of icy wind on a summer day, discombobulating; I am sure for a solid minute that I am going to be ill.

The minute passes, though, and I am left staring at the green and black screen of my computer, my eyes scanning over the small type there. I admire our organization for making the transition away from paper; a scant few parchmented items cross my desk. Everything else is in my tablet, in my computer, on my mobile. It makes for a much cleaner workspace, though it is deceiving. If I could turn all of the work currently on my computer into paperwork, it might halfway fill this office. It is the peril of having two jobs, it seems.

Currently, I am looking at a mission briefing prepared by our chief of staff in Logistics. I’ve read it twice already. It isn’t a particularly complicated assignment, but it needs to be acted upon soon. I ought to put an agent on it straight away, someone with enough wit to handle things if they went south— a Knight, preferably.

I know, though, that all Knights are currently preoccupied with other assignments. I have none to spare.

Well. . .

 _No_. I think this so fiercely that it surprises even myself. The ferocity is warranted, though.

I cannot send Eggsy out into the field. Not in such a state.

“He’s technically not even a Knight.” This I mumble to myself, as if I need further convincing. I don’t. Though Eggsy did save the world (or at least part of it), I cannot simply condone handing over a Knighthood, or even unquestioningly welcoming the boy into the fold.

 _Oh, yes, lad saves bloody human existence as we know it and you can’t offer him a job? Because he didn’t pass his tests? Good show._ God. It sounds so callous and martinet-minded even to me, but it’s more serious than that. I cannot ignore the simple fact that Eggsy failed. He failed the last test that all Knights have to pass. It is something so-called “progressive” minds might go a few rounds with me over: the test is archaic, it’s unnecessarily cruel, it’s barbaric. Failed candidates have indeed attempted to argue this point with me before; to all of their contentions, I can merely offer one answer:

Each test, each hurdle that must be passed in the Knight training program has a purpose, a specific characteristic or skill that it is meant to assess. You don’t get partial credit, and you don’t get do-overs. The threshold for a passing grade is one-hundred percent and no less. That being said: there is a _very good reason_ why we have that test, and why it is the last.

They should all consider themselves lucky. In the old days, you actually had to kill the bloody animal. There were no blanks.

 

 **-KM-**  

 

Eggsy is still in the infirmary when I come by to visit later that evening.

The mere sight makes me grit my teeth—but only for an instant. I do not know whether I force myself to relax so much as I am too exhausted to maintain the tension; in any case, the moment passes.

I pause before entering, gazing into the window that looks into the room. I can see that Eggsy is no longer wearing that blasted tuxedo; he has changed recently, not back into street clothes but into a comfy dark green cardigan and grey sweats. He looks like a different person in these clothes, out of place in himself. His hair gleams as it did before but darker than its normal hue, looking more damp than oily. He must have showered, then.

When I open the door, Eggsy turns to look at me immediately. His shift in attention is so much more sudden than before, so much more natural. Looking into his face, I can see that he’s gotten a least a few hours’ shut-eye. Some of the shadows have receded from his features, and his eyes are no longer rimmed with an angry red. He doesn’t look fantastic, but he looks somewhat better than when I left him.

There is a small yip from Eggsy’s lap, and it is only then that I realize someone has taken the trouble to bring in JB.

Someone has been checking in on Eggsy. Someone made him change, made him shower, shave, eat, sleep. Someone brought JB in, or had him brought in, to keep Eggsy company. Someone has been taking care of him.

I can’t be responsible for every man and woman in this organization—that isn’t even a question. I am accountable for the lives of my agents while in the field, but beyond that, the personal lives and inner turmoil of Kingsman agents aren’t my concern—haven’t been, anyway. As acting Arthur, I have slightly more responsibility in that arena, but not much. We have counselors and caretakers for that sort of thing. It isn’t something I should feel guilty about.

And I don’t feel guilty about neglecting Eggsy—if you can honestly call it neglect— I really don’t. I do not feel as though I let him down. But I do feel as though _I_ should have been the one keeping after Eggsy, checking in with him, asking him if he’s all right. _I_ should have brought in his dog, brought him a change of clothes, made him shower.

I know why I feel this way.

It goes beyond my own partiality for the boy—because, in light of everything, and despite everything, I have become . . . very fond of Eggsy. And this fondness is a contributing factor, but not the sole cause. I said before that I don’t feel as if I’ve let Eggsy down, and I don’t. I’ve let someone else down.

It’s because of Harry.

I should have looked after Eggsy for Harry.

Eggsy _is_ Harry’s. . . .

It sounds strange to phrase it like that, to think it like that. _Eggsy is Harry’s_. Harry’s what? His candidate? His friend? His protégé? His . . .

. . . perhaps, I should stop thinking about it.

I settle my shoulders back and do my best to dredge up a smile— but I only manage to fix up one side of my mouth. It hangs on my face awkwardly.

“Hullo, Eggsy.”

“Merlin,” Eggsy replies. His voice is a bit scratchy as though he’s had a cold. He gives me the missing half of my smile, and though it is small, it seems to be the genuine half.

I look him over; I can feel my throat beginning to constrict, and I swallow against it.

“You look better.”

“You don’t.”

I cannot help the snort that escapes me, though whatever humor I find in Eggsy’s bluntness is short-lived. It is difficult to shake how strange it feels to be talking to Eggsy like this. The room is not so small as to make it feel cozy, but it does feel like we are too close together, the several meters between us notwithstanding. I think it is the fact of Harry that makes it feel strange.

Harry.

It is then that I turn my gaze to really look at him.

I will myself to see only a man sleeping in a bed. A man with brown hair and a few days’ worth of stubble decorating a usually fastidiously clean jaw. A handsome man, with laugh lines around his eyes, smoothed out now in sleep.

Only a man. A man I might not even know.

Christ, I can’t do this.

I bring my gaze back to Eggsy; he is looking at me with some concern. Shit. Am I showing anything? I’m not tearing up, I know—that would be ridiculous. I have at least that much control. I purse my lips and rearrange whatever my current expression is into something more stony. I would settle for just about any expression under the sun if it would cause Eggsy to stop staring at me so.

Though, now that I think about it, perhaps Eggsy’s expression is directed less towards any emotional display of mine, and more towards my general state of being: run-ragged, nearly falling where I stand.

This thought is corroborated by the next thing that comes out of Eggsy’s mouth.

“Maybe you oughta get some sleep, ay bruv?”

Something hot and sour ripples through me. There is a snarky response sitting on the back of my tongue about being ordered around by a _child_ — but I lack the willpower, vitriol, and necessary muscle strength to dislodge it. It would be a pointless barb. I know that Eggsy means well.

( _The road to hell and all that.)_

I grunt noncommittally in response. I look around the room briefly for a chair to sit in, something that I can pull up to the other side of Harry’s bed. There isn’t one. Eggsy is occupying the only chair in the room, has more or less laid permanent claim to it. He takes up the space unapologetically, unthinkingly. He’s been sitting in that chair so long that it has probably molded to fit the contours of his perfectly-formed arse.

I find myself shaking my head once, a small and private gesture that goes unnoticed. Eggsy is truly amazing. He isn’t something I’ve encountered before. I’m not referring to his looks or physique.  Even if I were not so inclined, I can see that Eggsy is plainly attractive; on his better days he is mischievously handsome, and he has more than his fair share of a desirable figure. But pretty faces and tart derrieres are a dime a dozen. It’s not what I mean when I say Eggsy is something I’ve never encountered.

He has a certain grace about him. There is something in his smile, in his deference to other people, in his altruism. He is almost categorically selfless. Eggsy has the qualities of an archangel: smooth-cheeked, fierce, clever, tender, defender of the meek, willing to put himself first on the line to protect others. All of these qualities cumulate in him in a sort of aura. It’s not something he realizes, nor pretends not to realize—he truly is oblivious.

_I’d rather be with Harry, thanks._

I had heard that—the last bit of audio-visio feed from Chester’s glasses. Chester hadn’t been wearing them, had set them down upon the table when Eggsy entered; they had still been recording, though. I heard their conversation, and Eggsy’s words. His voice, so sure and hard, so determined.

_I’d rather be with Harry._

We all have an Achilles’ heel of some sort, I suppose.

As faults go, this is not a particularly terrible one to have. I don’t know that I can even consider it a true fault. I certainly cannot blame Eggsy for it.

Much as I dearly want to. 

Eggsy has been occupying this room for the past four days. He hasn’t left, save perhaps to shower. He has been here the entire time, sitting in this chair, scarcely leaving Harry’s side.

And this is where Eggsy’s altruism, his brazen selflessness, fails. He cannot see past this. All he knows is that Harry is here, injured and unconscious. It has not once occurred to Eggsy that someone else might want a moment alone with Harry.

This is what happens when you care about someone so deeply. You lose sight of the needs of others. You lose perspective.

_This is what happens when you l—_

I shut my eyes; it’s such a slow blink and I am so tired, I’m afraid I might not be able to reopen my eyes.

I do. It’s not really a relief.


	3. Tracing Orbits

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> First off, my apologies for the long delay in updating. To be perfectly honest, I don't anticipate being able to update regularly. However, that does not mean that I am not _working_ on the story regularly. This one . . . this will take some time. I can't explain it yet, but this story is very important to me.

The next day, I call Eggsy to my office.

That he deigns to obey at all is encouraging. He shows up five minutes early, twitchy and a look about his eyes like a mistreated animal; but he makes his appearance, nonetheless, and I am thankful. It saves me the trouble of having him forcibly dragged out of the infirmary. It is no stretch of the imagination to fathom how well that would have gone.  

He walks in slowly, dragging his feet across the burgundy carpet as the little pug dances with unwitting playfulness about him. Though not up to normal standards, I can hardly be annoyed that he brought the dog; all other things being equal, I do not believe that Eggsy would have come without him. I wait until Eggsy has seated himself in the chair across from me and JB has settled by his feet before I speak.

And when I do, I tell him without preamble that I am sending him on assignment.

It is not the assignment I had been looking at the previous day, the one I had wanted to send a Knight on. No, I bumped that assignment to the top of Bedivere’s queue, and he will be departing later today. The role to which I am delegating Eggsy into is for a smaller assignment, though no less essential. Most importantly, it will put him out of the country for at least three days.    

Eggsy is surprised at first. Confused. Unwilling. He wants to stay, though he doesn’t say it explicitly. He asks if there are other agents that can be sent, and is crestfallen when I assure him there are not. He does not plead with me, but he plainly wants to. He wants to be close to Harry. He doesn’t want to leave Harry’s side in case he wakes up. In case he. . . .

I do not tell Eggsy that he isn’t aiding Harry by just sitting here. I do not say that Eggsy’s presence is not helping or hindering, that it doesn’t matter whether he is here or not. I do not convey that sitting here, staring at Harry’s still form is a useless endeavor.

I know there is only one way I will get Eggsy to comply, and there is no point in trying to call it anything other than manipulation.

I need Eggsy to obey. I need Eggsy to leave.

So, I say to him quietly but unyieldingly:

“As much as I believe Harry would appreciate your company, Eggsy, I am also equally certain that he would rather you be out there, putting the world to rights. If you stay here, you can do nothing but wait.”

“But what if he wakes up?”

Eggsy asks with a tone that is almost desperate. Not desperate to prevent himself from leaving, but desperate to believe that Harry might wake. It would be heart-breaking; but I have not the time for sentiment.

I do take a long pause before replying, however, because—as much as I detest it— this is difficult for me.

“He won’t . . . not while you’re gone.” Pause. “I spoke with Dr. Caffrey; they’re going to induce a medical coma.”

When I glance back up from the polished wood of my desk, Eggsy looks as though someone has just placed a bullet through his lung. His face goes impossibly pale.

And, god, is he fucking _young_. He’s not ready for this, for any of it. For all of his maturity, his boldness and precociousness, he is not emotionally ready for this. He still needs emotional comfort, needs someone to be here with him, to reassure him. Eggsy is strong but he needs someone stronger than himself to hold onto. This is something he has done without for most of his life but, now that he has had a taste of it, it’s crippled him. He has been broken open: he’s so new and fresh and malleable, a sapling that still needs scaffolding in order to not wilt into the ground.

It is, damnably, my natural instinct to want to comfort him. I want to tell him that a coma is not a death sentence, and to say that it will be all right. I’ve never been particularly inclined to mother-hen anyone, but I almost feel that need with Eggsy. I want to comfort him for the same reason I felt guilty about not looking after him. He is experiencing pain on account of Harry, because of his attachment to Harry, and I feel responsible. I can feel the words dancing on the tip of my tongue, the platitudes of “he will be fine” and “this will work itself out”. I want to give Eggsy that kindness.

Pragmatism stops me, as it often does. For what kindness would those words be if they turned out to be a lie? We have the best doctors in the world working for us, but even they cannot give us absolute assurance of Harry’s safe passage from near-death into life.

Hope is something to be discouraged, in this profession. Purpose is a sleeker and better defense to wield.

“He wouldn’t want you to wallow here, Eggsy,” I tell him. My voice is barely above a murmur, rippling through the eerie stillness of my office. “He would want you to help.”

Eggsy looks down and stares at my desk. He gazes for a long while, almost as if he does not hear me; but his eyes begin to glisten, and I know that he has. He bites his lower lip, but no tears fall from the wells of his eyes. He refuses to cry. He only nods sharply and gently strokes JB with one, barely-shaking hand.

If I feel for him a sudden stab of fondness, it is not something I can help.

“I need you to go home, Eggsy. Go home, and get some proper rest. You will report to Field Prep in the morning, 0700 sharp.”

And it is surprising indeed, the speed with which Eggsy stands. I expected some amount of resistance, physical or mental, that would make Eggsy’s rise from his chair slower, more laborious. Not so. When the he stands the movement itself is not swift, but it is without hesitation. He stands with resolve.

He tucks JB under one arm and turns to me. His green eyes appear dark in the relative brightness of my office, seldom English sunlight streaming in through the windows. In the natural light, he looks both more haggard and more comely; it’s an attractive sort of vulnerability. He is tired but his strong jaw is set determinedly. He nods once again at me, more slowly this time.

He exits my office without another word.

 

**-KM-**

 

I pull up the HQ security feeds on my tablet. I watch Eggsy make his way through the hallways and down the stairwells of the large, sprawling building; I watch him until he pours JB into a cab, clambers in himself, and the driver pulls away from the curb.

I make sure he is out of sight before I stand and make my way to the infirmary.

I encounter next to no one on my way to Harry’s room. A single nurse is walking in the opposite direction of my strides, and he only lifts his head in acknowledgement as I stride past. When I reach Harry’s door, I punch in my security code hastily and slip inside with almost clandestine care.

As soon as I am inside, I turn and shut the door behind me, almost pressing myself against it as if to deter anyone from coming in after me. I stand there for a moment, my back to the room, one hand braced against the door, the other gripping tightly upon the handle as I listen to myself breathe. It is unnervingly quiet. Even the hiss of machines is almost nonexistent.

Slowly, I turn around. 

It is dark save for the small amount of light spilling in from the hallway window and the few lights on in the room. There is a set of them behind Harry’s bed; they cast downwards, their beams not penetrating any corners of the room. Just a small backlight to the bed, just enough to see by. The room is sparse save for the bed, a few monitors, the visitor’s chair, an x-ray board, and a desk. A small clay pot sits on top of the desk, empty. Flowers, perhaps, or just some shrub. A vine, maybe. Something green to spruce up the room. But the clay pot is empty. _It’s like a coffin_.

It’s an irrational thought, but one that sticks in my head as I continue to stare at the small, forgotten object. An empty casket. Something that used to hold life, now empty. Cavernous. I draw my eyes away.

In the shadows, the room feels both larger and somehow more confined. My heart is thudding in my chest as I look around, looking at the tiled floor, at the chair, at the monitors. Looking at anything but Harry.

I have wanted to be here. I’ve wanted to be here since I discovered Harry was alive. For the past four days, my every spare thought, any second I had to myself, I thought about coming here, to this room. To sit here, in silence, with Harry.

But now that I am, the silence seems nearly unbearable. It’s like a tangible thing, a weight in the air, pressing down upon my skull.

My lungs feel like they are shaking, tiny little tremors inside my chest. I should probably leave. It didn’t help for Eggsy to sit here, and it certainly won’t help for me.

But I’m here, and I don’t know when I will have another chance at this.

I keep my eyes floor-wards as I shuffle across the room; I sit down in the wooden chair, and it is hard and unyielding. Not molded to Eggsy’s arse, then.

Minutes tick by. I sit there in that chair and lean over my knees, staring at my hands which are clasped together in front of me. I eye the contours of my own anatomy: the cleanly-kept nails, the long dexterous tendons, the ropes of blue vein beneath my wrists.

I can feel the moment when it becomes both too much and too ridiculous; and suddenly, I can’t do anything but look.

A small sound—a cross between a sigh and a sob—lurches out of my throat before I can hold it back. It is swallowed up immediately by the silence of the room, and I snap my mouth shut to prevent further utterances; the noises build up at the back of my throat. They hurt; but I remain silent.

This is not the first time I have seen Harry in such a state. If it doesn’t kill him, though, I hope it will be the last.

He is so serene-looking, far more than he ever was awake. An alert Harry Hart always had something troubled about his eyes, something cynical and exacting—except for when he smiled. It had become a rarity of late, but when Harry Hart smiled all the darkness dispelled itself from the room and if you had any cares in the world, you could scarce remember them.

I look upon him, the smooth curve of his cheeks; there are lines that contour them, that tell you exactly how his face changes when he smiles. The same goes for the tiny crow’s feet at his eyes: they are a telltale of how his eyes crinkle in laughter, and how dearly he has loved to laugh. Looking at him like this, you might not guess that his profession was espionage. He has the look of an entirely different person.

He certainly doesn’t look like the sort of man who could wreck such carnage in a small, rural church in Kentucky.

I nearly sigh, but stop myself at the last moment and let it out in a long, noiseless stream of breath. I could spend ages detailing Harry’s face. I know it intimately. I ought to. He has been my closest and best friend for long enough. I can tell you that he has the barest hint of a cleft chin and it becomes more pronounced in certain facial expressions; I can tell you that his eyes are hooded, that they always have been, even when he was young; I can tell you about the scar at his left temple, on the opposite side of the bullet wound, a small white line that hides near his hairline; or about the scar on his upper lip, also invisible to the casual observer; I can tell you exactly how many days it has been since he’s shaved, judging by the stubble on his cheek and jaw; I can tell you about the miniscule lines on his forehead, or the nearly unnoticeable vein just beneath his right eye. I can tell you about his mouth and exactly what its every slight turn and tilt mean—

A muscle near his eye twitches and draws my attention. His lids are flickering ever so slightly; he might be dreaming.

I wonder what he will dream about when they induce the coma.

That shouldn’t feel like such a terrible thought, but it is. He won’t look much different than he does now. He may be less tense, so I am told; they won’t need to keep him nearly as numbed with painkillers, especially once the swelling ebbs. He will be able to rest peacefully.

His sleep as it is now is not fitful, but not easy. He twitches minutely, the way someone in pain does. One of his hands is outside of the duvet, and its fingers tense at odd intervals, never really clenching but threatening to.

It takes less effort than I predicted to reach out and take his hand in my own. His hand is warm and dry.

Harry doesn’t stir fully; he doesn’t necessarily know he’s being touched.

But I watch his face, and it relaxes minutely. His mouth smooths out into something completely expressionless, and his hand goes limp in mine, not a trace of tremor.

I stay there for a long while.

 

**-KM-**

           

I fall asleep at some point; I wake up several hours later, with my head pillowed in my arms, resting on the edge of the bed.  

When I check my watch it reads 0648, and I blanche. Good lord. I had slept for fourteen hours. How the bloody hell did I manage that?

My first thought is panic: people would be looking for me, would be wondering where I was. Demarais and I were supposed to have a meeting this morning. No one could find me. They would be panicking.

My second thought (which sliced uncaringly through the first) is that Kay, at least, knows exactly where I am – which was precisely the reason why no one was looking for me or had disturbed me.

With some difficulty, I push myself up from where I had been slumping. I sit back in the chair (god, I’m stiff) and reach into my pocket to pull out my phone. There are 283 messages in my inbox. It’s not nearly as bad as I expect.

Almost as if he knows I’ve awoken (which he might), a new priority message suddenly appears. It is from Kay.

_Sir. I held session with Demarais this morning. We reviewed the briefing you and I prepared yesterday. Green light._

The rush of relief and gratitude I feel for my assistant is more powerful than any emotion had a right to be just after waking. The lad was bloody competent, and that was the least one could say about him. When I had originally brought him over from R&D, there had been several nay-sayers. But Kay—Andrew—has been indispensable to me, and I don’t know that I can quite manage without him.

I pick out a quick reply. _Thank you. I will be in shortly._

My phone dings a response moments later. _You haven’t anything on until 9. Caffrey is coming in the room at 7 to put Mr. Hart under._

It does not escape me what Kay is doing. He is subtly trying to tell me to not come in until nine. To take the time to be with Harry when he goes under, and to not come in directly after. At any other time, I might have found this annoying; I am, after all, _his_ supervisor, not the other way around. He should not be giving me direction.

I am too tired to be annoyed, though. Much too tired.

I reply more slowly than before:

T _hank you. I will see you at 9._

It is just as I am slipping my phone back into my pocket that the electronic lock system on the door gives a small beep and the door opens. I look up to see the silhouette of Dr. Caffrey, with two other less distinguishable figures behind him. I cannot tell what his expression is while he takes me in, but I’m far from caring what he thinks.

“Dr. Caffrey,” I acknowledge, rising from the chair.

“Sir,” he simply answers in reply, inclining his head. He and the other two figures step out of the hallway and into the room. The other physician I am then able to recognize as Dr. Buchannan, the chief anesthesiologist. The nurse I do not recognize by name, only by face. Their expressions are clearer to me now that they have stepped into the room. If any of them are surprised by my being here, they hide it well.

Though, really, there should be no surprise. It has never been a secret that Harry and I were once as thick as thieves. And, though as we got older we were less inseparable, we were still considered the best of friends. . . .

We _are_ friends. Not were.

No one has died yet.

Caffrey and I stand in silence whilst Dr. Buchannan fusses over the cart that the nurse had brought into the room. I watch with an almost chilly detachment as Buchannan and the nurse don gloves and prepare a bolus of pentobarbital. Once Buchannan has the injection needle prepped, the nurse sets about fussing with Harry’s IV. Dr. Caffrey, who has been standing directly opposite me on the other side of Harry, takes a step back and Dr. Buchannan takes his place.

Dr. Buchannan looks up at me, needle held up with the cap still on. His eyes are cool; this might as well be a routine dosing for him.

“The bolus will ensure enough of the barbiturate enters his bloodstream to deeply sedate him,” Dr. Buchannan states calmly. “After the loading dose takes effect, we will put the barb into a new IV. It will be easier for us to maintain the dosage that way.”

I swallow past the dryness in my throat. “And how long do you expect him to be under?”

Dr. Buchannan and Dr. Caffrey exchange looks.

“Ten to twelve days is the ideal,” Caffrey responds finally. “Two full week at most. During that time, I encourage you to visit him. People in comas are often vaguely aware of what is going on around them.”

I nod. I know. He isn’t the first coma patient we’ve had.  

I do not say another word as I watch Dr. Buchannan administer the needle, depress the syringe, release the injection into the median cubital vein of Harry’s left arm. The nurse watches Harry’s vital readings and murmurs to Dr. Buchannan, who nods almost serenely. It seems to take ages for him to remove the needle and apply pressure, but in reality I know it was less than a minute.

I listen to the steady beep-beep of Harry’s heart monitor, slowing down gradually as the drug permeates his circulatory system. His expression does not change. His breathing slows almost imperceptibly, coming in a tiny, inaudible whistle through his nose.

My departure must seem abrupt, but I take it without explanation. I incline my head to Caffrey, perfectly stony-faced, and then turn heel. It takes me all of four long strides to exit the room.

The long hallway of the non-emergency ward is quiet. A pair of nurses walk side-by-side about seventy paces from me, their backs turned, their dark scrubs rustling. I look down at the polished floor, my shoes coming into view. They flop like sleek black fish on the floor. I think . . . I think my legs are gelatinous. I feel wobbly, but at the same time have the intense urge to begin sprinting. My heart—Christ, my heart picks up pace in anticipation—

I stand still for a moment. The urge quiets; then dissipates.

My walk to the elevator is even and measured, if stiff.

 

**-KM-**

 

The day is long, after that.

Once I am in the elevator, I make a tactical decision and press the button for the fourth-floor. I cannot see myself tremble, but I feel as though I am shaking, internally. My very organs are thrumming in my body with more than their usual nervous activity. I haven’t had proper exercise in almost a week, and there is half a hope that the physical exertion of a run will drive my body into submission, into subsiding from the shaking.

The running does me some good. It always has. I was never a _runner_ , per say—boxing was my sport, when sport was all it was—but it often cleared my head. Something about repetitive motion, performed almost without thinking, the only real task being to pay attention to the scenery. The ground being eaten up beneath my feet. The number of laps I’ve taken around the track. The physical exhaustion afterwards.

I run for an hour. Then I go back to the locker room, shower. It is empty save for me. While I was running, Kay had brought in a fresh suit for me, and it hangs neatly in my plane of view. Since becoming Arthur, the standard of my appearance has risen. I can no longer hide in my soft but functional jumpers and simple trousers. I wear the armor of all the rest of the Knights. It reminds me of being back in the field, when I was younger and being considered for Safir’s position. We did things a little bit differently, back then. We promoted from within our ranks, rather than outside. Youngsters like myself were recruited for ordinary agent positions; you never wanted a Knight to die but, if they did, it meant you would have a shot at the title.

I remember the first suit I was fitted for, the way it felt to clothe myself in something made completely and absolutely for me. Sleek and grey, completed by a green pocket square. I had never owned anything so luxurious. I had almost felt as if I didn’t belong in it. I remember standing in the fitting room, nervously running my hands down the lapels.

But Harry had been there with me; and when I stepped out of the fitting room and revealed myself, the grin upon his face assuaged all my fears of inadequacy.    

Aside from that moment, suits have never felt entirely right to me. Even now, as I wear the mantle of Arthur, the suit feels strange. It feels less like I am presenting myself, and more like the suit is preventing me from being seen. The suit isn’t easy to miss; the man inside of it is.

At nine I have my meeting with the director of aviation. This is followed by a hastily eaten lunch, more meetings, and going through cyberwork.

And perhaps the few hours of sleep I got at Harry’s bedside finally weakened the dam on my exhaustion, because I am _tired_. It is Friday and weekends have meant little to me for several years now, but by the time four rolls around, I want little more than to leave and sleep.

My haggard state does not go unnoticed. Kay watches me out of the corner of his eye when I pass by his desk. He deftly refills my cup of tea before I find myself able to ask. He takes things out of my hands. He knows I’m going to leave the office today. He is trying to make it easier on me. He is trying to tell me, _Go, we can handle it._

And so they can. I know they can. I have agents all over the globe taking care of the world’s problems, and they can spare me for about ten hours.

At fourteen minutes after five, I stand from my desk. I am right in the middle of replying to a memo, but I cannot be bothered to finish it. I have to go.

I have no briefcase to collect; I simply go to Kay and ask that he bring the car around. I nod to him as I walk out the door. He signs nothing.

 

**-KM-**

My flat is quiet and dark when I arrive.

I deftly disarm the alarm system, my fingers tiredly plucking over the number pad in the front hallway. I place my thumb in the middle of the fingerprint reader, and the tiny shrieking of the alarms dies out.  The silence that follows in its wake is just shy of unnerving.

Not that it should be; it is almost perpetually silent in my flat.

I hang my overcoat and then step through the hallway into the main living area. It is the one room of the place that I think may look slightly homey: there is a brown leather sofa, a matching comfy chair, and the walls are lined with rows upon rows of shelves laden down with books. A small built-in bar is positioned cozily in one corner. Everything has a fine layer of dust upon it; I will need to clean.

My jacket comes off as I walk through, ending up over the back of the sofa. I fumble to loosen my tie, and undo the top button of my shirt as I walk through the door into the kitchen.

The lights flicker on, pale blue halogens giving the grey granite countertops and white floors a ghostly glow. Though all the necessary utensils and crockery are hung and seated in obvious places, there is little about this kitchen to suggest that anyone has ever cooked in it. It is immaculate nearly to the point of forbidding mess.

(It wasn’t, always. At one point, my flat had the air of being almost studiously lived-in. It’s not a charade I bother with anymore.) 

I am not hungry. I haven’t been truly hungry in about forty-eight hours, but I know I need to eat something.

I set the kettle on and open the fridge. Almost bare. A check of the pantry is slightly more fruitful. Thank mercy for canned goods and their ridiculous expiration dates.

I am heating up a can of soup when the kettle boils and clicks off. I cross the kitchen to the side lined with cupboards and open a cabinet. A row of pristine white ceramic plates and other dinnerware greets me; everything is stacked neatly and spaced evenly. It looks like a display in a store, almost.

A row of simple white coffee cups is to my left. I reach for one, and pulling it from the shelf reveals its neighbor, whom it was trying to hide:

A single colored cup amongst the whitewash, shaped differently than the rest and a deep red.

This cup represents a trend in my home. I would call my style of living Spartan, if not for the fact that the flat is much too large to be of functional use to a single man. An extravagance on Kingsman’s part, to provide its most dangerous and doomed agents with the most worldly luxury. But almost everything in my flat is plain, pristine, deliberately-numbered, symmetrical, even. Almost everything, save for the few items littered in various places, items that have no match or meaning or seemingly a reason for belonging here:

A red cup in my kitchen.

A gold lapel pin on my dresser.

A single red tie amongst my assortment of black and grey.

A few slim volumes of poetry hidden between pilot manuals.

An unframed photograph.

 _Two_ unframed photographs.

Evidence of human life, I suppose. Remnants of personality. Inevitable, even for me. I have no penchant for knick-knacks or mementos; I prefer to keep my living accommodations as impersonal as possible. The only material possessions I have in abundance are books, and even these are functional in a nature, about science and history and a multitude of other serviceable subjects. These rare items have ended up in my life by chance. Almost by mistake, it seems.

I could get rid of them; but I won’t.

The soup and tea sit warm in my stomach as I climb up the stairs and lug myself down the hallway. I walk past the door to my study, just another room with a desk and chair and too many books about things the majority of the world is too ambivalent or ignorant to care about. There is another door at the end of the hall, for the unused guest bedroom; and then there is mine, just in front of me.

I open the door and begin shedding the rest of my clothing. Waistcoat and tie are dismantled and set upon a simple wooden chair by the door. I sit in the chair and unlace my shoes, toe them off. I wander to my dresser and exchange my trousers for comfortable wool pajama bottoms. The gold lapel pin glints at me in the near darkness.

Out of habit, I check the sights on the telescope set up in my bedroom; it’s an older SCT, but in good shape, positioned by the large north-facing window. It seems almost silly to have it; living in London, with all its light pollution, it is difficult to see much. One does not require a telescope, however, to see constellations.   

True night is just beginning to fall. The ever-present stars of Cepheus and Draco wink out from the dark.

I close the curtains and turn away from the window.

My bed hasn’t been touched since I made it last about a week ago. I pull back the covers and they come away from the bed stiff, as if with sleep. I slip beneath them and shiver at their coolness.

There is one more oddity in my house. As I settle into bed, I can see its faint outline on the wall opposite me. A shadow box, containing a collection of four pinned insects: _Greta diaphanus, Corinea sylphina, Cithaerias andromeda esmeralda_ , and _Greta oto_.

Clear-winged butterflies.

The next time I blink, my eyes won’t reopen. My eyelids feel as if they are weighed down by sandbags. There is a faint humming in my ears, in my head, but I think it’s just the sound of silence; no cars bustle down the street outside; the house does not creak.

I can’t remember ever feeling more tired.

Sleep comes quickly. Too quickly for me to hope not to dream. 

 

**-KM-**

_“So, so quiet, Alec.”_

_It sounds like it should be a question, but it’s not._

_We’re at Cambridge. I recognize the color of the stone wall you are leaning up against. Your head is tilted back, eyes closed. Your young neck is pale and smooth and speckled by the afternoon sun._

_A slight breeze tickles past my cheek. Soft autumn sounds pervade the air around us: birds warbling, leaves rustling, wind chimes clinking delicately in the distance. You aren’t referring to the scenery._

_“I’m always. . . .” it could be a complete thought on its own, but I trail off as if I cannot think how to finish it._

_Your sleepy eyes blink open. You look at me through slanted eyelashes, both serious and almost coy. Your mouth is twisted ever so slightly with curiosity, the way it used to in the early days, when you were still learning how to read me._

_“Are you angry with me?”_

_I look down. There is a blade of grass in my hands, twisting, twisting. “I’m wondering . . . if this is you trying to push me away.”_

_I hear your shift, straightening yourself. “It’s not. You know.”_

_I smooth the blade with my thumb. “I don’t.”_

_“I suggested you for the job because you’d be bloody good at it,” you say, voice tinged with a feathered edge of irritation, and this is the first fully fluid and coherent thing either one of us has yet to say. I touch my tongue to my lip and taste your words; they do not smack of a lie._

_But we’re spies. We know of the gulf that spans between lies and truths._

_“I just want you where I know you will be safe.”_

_I laugh, a harsh bark that startles me._

_Ah, Harry. You are tender, tender, and so full of shit._

_I look up at you then. You are fully studying me, not just looking at me; you are not bothering to hide it._

_"Safety is only an illusion,” I say. “But you know that.”_

_You smile. “Yes. Yes, I know.”_

_You close your eyes again, and I think about Eggsy. Eggsy, on the outside. Are you trying to keep him safe? Push him away? Is that why you are sleeping, so dark and so sound?_

_After a while, I ask you about it. You don’t open your eyes. You say nothing._

 

**-KM-**

 

When I wake from the dream, my throat is dry and my eyes are stinging.

I lean over to my right and reach towards my bedside table, for the glass of water I had placed there about a week ago. It is still half-full. It tastes stale in the clean, clear way that only stagnating tap water can taste. It helps.

I lay back in my bed and stare up at the ceiling, letting my eyes adjust to the near complete darkness. It’s early morning, perhaps four or five; too early for any trace of sunrise. It’s a contemplative sort of dark that I find myself in, both oneiric and alert.

I don’t dream often. When I do, it is typically quite mundane, almost always work-related. I have not dreamed of Cambridge in a very long while.

I close my eyes briefly, reveling the added darkness behind my eyelids. I can still see the last fading images of my dream, ghostly and familiar.

It was real. The conversation, that is. I had said some of those very things to Harry, once upon a time— though certainly not while at Cambridge. These things had come later, after we had both been inducted into Kingsman as junior agents. Again, things were done differently back in those days. Candidates for Knighthood were selected from a pool of fieldmen. This had changed when Chester became Arthur—some small effort to prevent rivalry among the ranks, I was told. Perhaps even to prevent nepotism (which, given Chester, is laughable). We were all so eager to be Knighted; it was a time when young ambition was highly encouraged, and we would have done anything and befriended anyone to rise up.

Those of us who are left are much wiser, now. It’s not a game. It never was.

You would have never known, though, the way Harry and I played. So fearless. So _reckless._

He had been promoted first. It made sense: he was older than me by almost five years, had been in Kingsman longer, had proved himself as one of the most promising junior agents in the pool. He became Galahad at twenty-seven, only a year after I myself was inducted into Kingsman. He took me under his wing then, just as he had done at Cambridge. We went on missions together, he as the principal and me as back-up. A dynamic duo of sorts. Upper management was impressed with our mission success rate, impressed enough to consider me for the next available Knight position, despite my age.

It was Safir the fourth. I remember distinctly. He was the first Kingsman in history who lived long enough to retire. His place was up for grabs; it seemed likely to be mine.

But I was passed up.

It was not that I failed a test. I was never allowed to take them. I was not selected for that round of Knight training. I was not given the chance.

I still wonder, to this day, how much influence Harry had in that decision. I could be giving him too much credit; then again, I could not. At the time, he was the most junior of all the Knights, but Harry always had a way of getting what he wanted.

I never directly accused Harry of sabotaging my chance at a Knighthood. A part of me does not want to believe that he is or was capable of something so presumptuous or patronizing—to decide my future for me, as though he knew better than I.

Never mind the fact that he had been deciding my future from the moment we met.

I lie in bed for another hour or so, unable to fall back asleep. Around 0630, my phone vibrates. A message from the office in Brazil. I am needed.

 

**-KM-**

 

It is at the end of this very long day that I find myself back in the infirmary, sitting once again in the chair next to Harry.

I take in his face, unchanging in the artificial light of the room. I wonder if he is dreaming; dreams as I have dreamed.  

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It came to my attention (just now) that the first two chapters got swapped somehow. I've fixed it.
> 
> Also, an SCT refers to a Schmidt-Cassegrain telescope. It's a good one for amateur astronomers.
> 
> Lastly, please do look up the butterflies mentioned, because I cannot really describe to you how beautiful I find them.


	4. The Trappings of Sentiment, Part I

I return, because I cannot help it. I return the next evening to Harry’s bedside. And the next.

For the most part, I simply sit in silence. I can speak to him—I should. Caffrey and Buchanan both have informed me that coma patients can often hear and sometimes remember what is said to them whilst they are under. It’s been shown that keeping them company, talking to them as if they were awake . . . it helps. It will help Harry, if I speak.

Every time I open my mouth, my tongue feels heavy and my mind fills with nothing.

Does he know I am here, despite my silence? Can he tell that it is me? Does it comfort him? Does he know what my voicelessness means?

These things I want to ask him, have been waiting to ask him. I am at liberty to say anything I please, now that Eggsy has been ensconced to some other purpose and has (at least temporarily) ceased to haunt this room. Anything I want to utter will be in fullest confidence. Anything I want to ask.

I keep my silence. It’s easier.

The stubble lining Harry’s face has begun to resemble more a true beard. It grows into the edges of his face, softened somewhat by middle-age; the hair contours his visage, gives it new lines and definition. I find it unsettling; Harry never appreciated facial hair much on himself. For a brief time at Cambridge he had his artful stubble, and for a spell in Morocco he had cultivated a small beard; but both times, he had quickly tired of it. He found that he preferred to be clean-shaven; he said it made him look more honest.

It seems unfair that he should have his honesty taken from him while he is powerless to defend it.

On the third day since Eggsy left, I bring a shaving kit with me to Harry’s room.

This is another old ritual for us. It is not one that Harry is aware of. Or, then again, perhaps he is. I often suspect (and often find) that Harry knows more than he lets on; this particular ceremony might be yet another reason why he looks at me with laughter in his eyes, but without an explanation in his words.

For you see, a proper friend will make fun of you mercilessly to your face. Your eccentricities and idiosyncrasies will be laid bare and you will always know exactly against what you are defending yourself or being playfully derided for. But we are more than proper friends. Our mercilessness comes from making the other guess about what they are being teased.

Though, if I’m being honest, Harry has always done more of the teasing.

I am left with the feeling that no one really understands why Harry insists upon teasing me. In basic training, I developed the reputation as being something of a cold fish. The Ice Man, the other junior recruits called me, sometimes with an air of comradery, sometimes with disdain. I grew up poor in a rough part of town; I imagine is it this experience which has made it difficult to garner any sort of reaction from me. After a few weeks of mandatory joking and generally mild hazing, most of the lads gave up.

Not Harry. He persists. His approach is more subtle, granted, often taking the form of little more than a sly comment and a particular look sent my way. The sort of looks and gestures only people who have known each other forever can get away with.

He teases me about _this_ , I’m sure. He simply never says anything about it.

I push open the door with my right hand, the shaving kit tucked in the crook of my left elbow. The door automatically closes behind me. The room is dark; the lights are set to keep in place a natural circadian rhythm, and it is almost always night or near dusk when I arrive. I usually leave the lights off, preferring to sit in darkness, or by the light of a single small lamp. Today, however, I reach up and flick the switch on.

It has become easier for me to look upon Harry’s face, and I keep glancing over to it as I set the kit down on the nearby table and unload its contents: shaving cream, a brush, a comb, clippers, a straight razor. As I lay out my tools, I think about his face, how it is to be handled.

I begin first with the clippers and comb.

It is a small but necessary task, to clip away the longer strands of hair from his face. His hair grew the most the first few days he was in the infirmary, the growth slowing down the longer his body lay prone/unmoving. The beginnings of a beard are only just long enough to exceed the scrape of what a blade can handle. Once his beard is trimmed down to more resemble stubble, I prepare the cream and bristle. I apply it gently to his face; it is cold, and I can see the minute twitching of Harry’s skin, the slight and unconscious discomfort. I continue to watch his face for movement as I strap the straight razor.

It is very difficult to shave a sleeping man. Not necessarily for fear of waking them, which isn’t a consideration in this circumstance, but because there is angling and maneuvering, the deliberate pulling of skin until it is taut. It takes enough concentration for a conscious person to perform upon themselves. To do this for another unconscious person is considerably more difficult.

Fortunately, I have had a great deal of practice.

Once the blade is as sharp as I would like, I recline Harry’s bed until he is lying completely flat; I lean over and slip my left hand behind his neck, pulling up just slightly until the skin under his chin is taut.

And then, I begin.

It is a painstaking process, but soothing. I handle Harry gently, my eyes tracking every slow and careful swipe of the blade across his skin. His skin is not as young and firm as it used to be, but I know it so well that there is no chance of my leaving a blemish. Tilt his head left, right, hold his jaw carefully in my hand as my other armed appendage makes its slow way across his stubble, clearing the path. I work deftly around the oxygen tubes near his nose, lifting them on each side where they bisect his face. I pay special attention to all the curves and angles of his face, his jawline, his chin. Even some of the angles that aren’t pertinent: the high arch of his cheekbone, the ridge of his brow, the bow of his lips.

In my periphery, his heart monitor blinks.

 

**-KM-**

 

Just as I am finishing up, my phone buzzes. It is Kay. News of Eggsy.

I set my phone on the sink counter and read the briefing as I rinse the blade, bristle, and bowl. Mission success. Eggsy has passed on relevant information; he will be leaving the country tomorrow, returning to Britain the following day.

A short respite, then. But probably for the best.

As I wash my hands, I think of Eggsy. Was it wise to send him away? He has performed well enough, yes, but what has it done to him, being afar? What has he thought about, these past few days? Has he let himself think at all?

I turn slightly to look back at Harry, sleeping, clean-shaven. Yes. Yes, of course Eggsy has been thinking. He’s an emotional boy. He’ll have been doing little else.

My gaze shifts from Harry to the single visitor’s chair that occupies the room. It sits in an almost accusatory stillness, as if tacitly chastising me for sending its one constant companion away. Christ. It’s a bloody chair.

What else was I supposed to do, though? Let him sit here and wallow? But then, how can I really claim to know what is best for Eggsy? Was it really any of my business to begin with? That question is more difficult to answer.

It wasn’t healthy for him. That much I can be sure of. It was not healthy for Eggsy to sit here, day and night, barely eating nor sleeping nor moving. Yet another interesting dichotomy about Eggsy: self-preservation seems to be always his motive, but he also has a self-destructive streak a mile wide, and it comes out most when he thinks he has put a loved one in danger or in pain.

I feel something icy settle in the pit of my stomach. Christ. The mission. _This_ is why I should have never sent him out. He had plenty opportunity to do something rash, something stupid, something that could easily end his life—

But, no. He hadn’t. He had behaved, he had maintained. He was on his way back.

He’s safe.

I close my eyes and brace myself against the sink, breathing slowly. _He is safe,_ I tell myself. _He is safe._

For the time being.

Harry’s eyelids flicker, and it sends a jolt through me before I remind myself that this is not unusual for coma patients. Something like disappointment settles in my chest as I slowly make my way back to the side of the bed, to the chair. I sit down once more.

Why . . . why is Eggsy reacting like this? Why this time? When we had first thought Harry dead, the young man had been surprisingly calm, surprisingly mission-minded. Perhaps he had been a bit taciturn on the jet ride to the alps, but so were we all. Infiltrating Valentine’s hideaway, preventing V-Day, he had exhibited all the cocky assurance and vibrant finesse of a young man on the cusp of greatness. Not at all a young man who had just lost his . . . what? Friend? Father figure? L— well. I won’t speculate. But, point in case, he had been so level-headed and professional about it, I have to wonder what has changed, if anything. If Harry had really died out in Kentucky, would Eggsy have eventually come to grips with it as he is now? Once the world had been saved and we returned to business, would he have eventually devolved into this sessile, teary-eyed mess that I have been finding him in lately? Perhaps.

I think that this is Eggsy coming to the realization that mortality is not, in fact, not just something for other people.

It is a difficult lesson to learn. We don’t tend to fully comprehend death or loss until it happens to us, or someone we love. Eggsy’s own father died when Eggsy was very young, too infantile to fully understand; he didn’t know, until now, what it is like to lose a father—though I think it is more complicated than that.

No. I _know_ it is more complicated.

Whatever the relationship between Harry and Eggsy, it is a moot point right now.

But, if Harry . . . if Harry dies. . . .

I don’t want to think about what that might do to Eggsy. But I feel as if I already know. 

 

**-KM-**

             

I am in the room when Eggsy returns.

It is getting late. 10:47 pm, by my watch’s count. I should have gone home already, but I stayed. Possibly because I knew Eggsy would come. This would be the first place he would go.

I am not disappointed. At three minutes to eleven, I hear the sound of the security pad on the outside of the door being activated, and the click of the door’s lock. I look up from where I sit in that lonely chair as the door opens, spilling in light from the outside.

Even Eggsy’s silhouette looks exhausted. He hangs upright as if someone were holding him up by hooks sunk into his shoulders—little more than nylon puppet strings.

He notices me immediately, which is marvel. I know this not because I can see his face or his eyes, but because he stiffens slightly, and turns his body just a fraction. I can feel him consider me for a moment. Then he closes the door and shuffles the rest of the way into the room.

I let the lights go out around sundown; the only thing I have bothered to keep on was a single backlight behind Harry’s bed. It casts long shadows across the room, illuminating little. However, when Eggsy steps closer, it does allow me to see him properly; and— Christ, he is still in tactical gear. He hasn’t shaved since he left. His eyes are bloodshot, almost crazed, but, more than anything, he looks physically and emotionally exhausted.

Mission success. What toll that took on his well-being, I had no way of knowing. I feel guilty, all the same.

Eggsy pauses for a moment a few paces from me. My full attention is upon him, and we watch each other in silence. There is an air of anticipation about him. What, I wonder, does he expect me to say? Perhaps he is waiting for me to vacate the chair—it is still the only one in the room, and it would be the polite thing to do, given his condition. But I am not inclined to give it up just yet.

Almost as if he hears me think this, he gives a small sigh. He then moves around the other side of the bed. With a muffled groan, he hoists himself backwards onto the small desk, propping his back up against the wall. He props up one knee, wincing slightly as he does. Whether the wince is due to stiffness or an injury, I cannot say.     

Following next is a motionless moment that waits for one of us to speak. Given that I am not the intruder, I do not think this task falls to me. Anatomy of a scene beside, I do not necessarily have anything to say to Eggsy.

(Except, perhaps, _Leave_.)

“He looks different.”

The comment is quiet. So quiet that I could have pretended not to hear; but I respond before I can think not to.

“He shouldn’t.” He has not moved. His breathing has been steady and unperturbed these last five days. Nothing has changed.

As if hearing these thoughts and disagreeing with them, Eggsy shakes his head. “He’s shaved.”

I look up sharply though Eggsy, blessedly, keeps his eyes fixed on Harry. He doesn’t look up at me, does not see whatever scant emotion flickers over my face.

“The nurses . . . one of the nurses saw to it.”

Eggsy’s eyes do flick to me then. It is only fleeting, only enough to catalog whether or not I have any kind of expression on my features. He is a few seconds too late, though, and his eyes return to Harry without having deciphered anything.

After a long moment, he speaks again.

“He ever have a beard?”         

My mind immediately vacates the dark, antiseptic room, and flies back nearly a decade, to the hot sands of Morocco. I think about nights holed up in our shitty rented room, listening to the neighbors shout at each other in Turkish. Watching from my cot as Harry performed his ablutions by the sink, back turned, the small and irregular-shaped mirror reflecting a slice of his face. He trimmed his beard carefully. During the day, he wore it underneath the same dark, distrustful eyes as everyone else. It helped him blend in, better than I. It hid his mouth from me; I could scarcely tell when he was smiling. It was a relief when he shucked it off once we were back on the island.

I tell Eggsy this. I tell him about Morocco, describe the air in its musky, dry heat. I tell him about the mission that brought us there. I tell him about Harry’s beard. I don’t know why. It is none of his business. I should be reticent of sharing anything with him.

But I think I’ve been waiting to talk about Harry for a long time.

So I go on. Eggsy asks, I tell. Between us, Harry breaths.  

 

**-KM-**

 

I depart at 2 am, leaving Eggsy to stay. Before I leave, however, I make demands on his health. I ask him to go home, see his mother, to sleep, to eat, to shower. He is too sleepy and exhausted to do anything but agree.

I do not go home, but utilize the couch in my office. Like much of the furniture in this bloody building, it wasn’t necessarily designed for comfort; but I have slept on rocks and sand and wet forest floor. It is nothing to fall asleep on an unyielding piece of furniture.

When I next open my eyes, it is nearly six, and the first thing I see is a tray upon the coffee table, bearing a steaming pot of tea, a cup and saucer, and a plate of toast, egg, and jam. As I stiffly sit up, I see that a fresh suit has been laid out for me across the other end of the table.

I think, as I fully right myself, that I may never be accustomed to this sort of thing. I don’t mean being catered to—although I suspect it will be a long while before I become comfortable with that as well. What I mean is that, while never actually a Knight, I was, for a time, a fieldman of the most formidable caliber. I was sent on missions where the chance of death was almost certain, where constant vigilance was the difference between being compromised and staying aloof. I learned how to sleep in chairs, on stone, in alcoves of windows, underneath trains, in coffins; I learned how _not_ to sleep for stretches of twenty-four, thirty-two, forty-eight hours. I trained myself to be aware of every detail of my surroundings, to wake at the slightest of human noises. Most of those instincts and abilities I still retain. I’ve startled, worried, and angered more than one companion for my intensity.

Though how Kay can tip-toe around and set this up without waking me is completely uncanny. His silence, in all its aspects, is almost supernatural.

At times, I have the urge to tell Kay that this is not in his job description. It is one thing to prepare and present my daily attire— ironic as this is, three-piece suit selection is not my forte— and quite another to . . . well, _care_ for me. It almost seems like too much.

It would feel like a faux-pas to mention it, though; so I don’t.   

When I emerge from my office half an hour later, fed, washed, and dressed, Kay is sitting at his desk, typing madly away. He looks prim and proper as always, the collar of his shirt stiffly starched, his back ramrod straight, pale face blank except for concentration. He looks up immediately when I enter the outer office, abandons his typing, and begins to sign.

_Demarais would like to hold a meeting with you and the Director of the American office,_ he signs, hand movements crisp and sharp. _Also, our liaison for Parliament has prepared a brief on spin-control for the assignments next week that needs your approval._

I nod and sign in reply. _Schedule my meeting with Demarais and Donahue for this afternoon. Why is my approval needed for the press brief?_

_The missions are high-profile targeting. Members of the House of Lords will be pilloried._  

I only just repress a sigh. _Very well._

Kay reaches across his desk and picks up my tablet, handing it to me. When I unlock the screen, the day’s agenda and the topmost pressing paperwork items are presented. I hear a succession of taps, and my meeting with Demarais and Donahue appears on the screen for 2 pm. 

Kay allows me a moment to look over the list before raising a hand to get my attention.

_Mission reports from Lamorak, Lancelot, Unwin, and Lizann are being finalized. Their reports will be ready for you by 3 pm. Lamorak is in hospital, Lancelot is taking a reprieve of one day before going back out, Unwin is also in hospital but unharmed, and Lizann is taking reprieve to continue his Knight training._

Lamorak in hospital? Concerned, I sign back to him, _What is the problem with Lamorak?_

Kay shakes his head, as if seeing my concern and dismissing it, even though my expression has not changed since we started conversing. _Two broken ribs, slight concussion. Expected to make a full recovery._

I let out a slow breath that is not a sigh. Good. Pietro Varonikov, Lamorak the Fourth, is currently one of the only agents we can send into Russia to work with the Russian office, and it would be inopportune to lose him now. In Kingsman, as in anywhere else, no one is irreplaceable; however, at the level of Knight, one does become invaluable.

_Good,_ I sign. _Anything else?_

Kay lifts his hands and then stops. I do not think I have ever seen him hesitate before in my life, and the fact that he does so now is truly alarming. His face, generally blank, takes on a hint of distaste.

_The deputy director in Berlin wishes to speak._

This time, I do not bother hiding my displeasure. Again? _About what?_ I sign.

_He has found fault with your direction regarding reconstruction efforts in Belgium—_

_Has he run this by Director Ederman?_ I demand, interrupting Kay with a bilious wave.

Kay shakes his head once. _No. He believes you and he should speak personally._

I feel the hot edge of irritation pierce my skull. The deputy director of the Berlin office, Karl Lauterbach, has been nothing but unhelpful since I took over as Arthur. He has challenged almost every directive I have thrown their way, almost always without consulting Ederman, whom I am beginning to wonder about. The impertinent little shit seems intent upon discrediting my authority, one dull meeting at a time. Personally, I have no patience for this.

_Tell Lauterbach that if he has issue with my orders, he must take it up with his immediate superior. Then, and only then, will it be discussed._

Kay nods again. He does not look as though he has anything else to say.

Irritated, I roll my neck to the side until there is an audible pop. _I am shutting myself in,_ I sign, _not to be disturbed._

Kay’s features smooth out into a plain of polite stoicism. _Lunch?_ he signs.

_Have it brought at 1, please. Something light._

 

**-KM-**

           

I spend the morning ensconced in my office, door firmly shut and bolted. While Kay knows when I am to be left alone, other people do not, and I have no time for interruptions.

I focus my efforts on going through paperwork for the Research and Development division as well as for the Armory and Intelligence divisions. As Merlin, running these departments would have been my primary tasks; in my present role, I have been forced to delegate leadership to individuals within those specific departments, giving them as much direction as I am able—which is much less than I would like. The acting department heads—Morrison, Hathaway, and Gainsley— are doing well, given the circumstances; but progress in all three departments has been slow-going. We are constantly running to put out the next fire, instead of taking proactive steps to prevent them; even once activity quiets down, I am not sure that this modus operandi will change. It is not sustainable; that much is clearly evident, even in the few weeks—week and a half?—that our world has been changed. I need to find a replacement.

This is something that I am admittedly reluctant to do. I do not want to be Arthur but, more than that, I do not want to give up my title as Merlin.

I am not the only one whom this worries, it seems. Others are against it as well. For some, the transition between calling me “Merlin” and “Arthur” has been seamless. Percival and Bedivere, for example, did not bat an eye and have called me Arthur since the day I took over. For others, such as the technicians and project managers it was formerly my sole duty to oversee, the M of “Merlin” is still the first thing that attempts to roll off their tongue. Some, like Kay, compromise by merely addressing me as “Sir”—though Kay, at least, I suspect does this not because calling me “Arthur” makes him uncomfortable, but because he perceives that it makes _me_ uncomfortable. He’s a clever boy. Almost too clever.

Alec. That had been my name. Alec Mathers. If you were to ask Harry, it would have been Alec “Oissian” Mathers; he was always unreasonably fond of that little nickname. Regardless, I have not been called any part of that name in a very long while. I am simply Merlin. I have been for the past two decades. You see, unlike the Knights, I have no alternate identity. Merlin is not my codename, but my true name, the one I was born to fulfill.

When Lancelot the Fifth was killed, I had been at Kingsman long enough that only two people knew my birth name.

Now, almost a year later, one of those people is dead.

The other might as well be.

It is harsh to think this way, I know. But Harry Hart is laying in the infirmary, unmoving, in a coma. He was the last person to know I was human; and, if he dies, he will take the last of that humanity with him.

 

**-KM-**

 

I do not want to return to the infirmary, but some irreconcilable force draws me there anyway.

Eggsy is there, unsurprisingly. What is surprising, however, is the way he looks at me when I walk in. Or that he looks at me at all.

Previously, when Eggsy entered or inhabited this room, god help anyone that tried to draw his attention away from Harry. Now, however, as I slide into the room, jacket folded over one arm and tie loose, he actually stands from his chair and turns his body to look at me.

And his face . . . his expression is unusual. Hopeful, almost.

“You’re back,” he says, somewhat lamely.

I nod. I survey him once, carefully: he is no longer wearing his tactical suit, but a pair of jeans and a long-sleeved grey t-shirt. He looks as though he has bathed, and I surmise that he has eaten, but he still looks exhausted. There is something distinctly different about him, though, in comparison to our recent interactions: he seems a little more alive, I think. A little more vibrant.

“You went home?” I ask. My gaze flits over to Harry. Nothing has changed.

Eggsy nods. He swallows, and I see his throat bob, watch the movement of a single dark beauty mark on his neck.

“Yeah,” he says. “Saw me mum. She was. . . . ”

He does not need to finish. “And Daisy?”

Eggsy’s face brightens a little at the mention of his sister. “Gettin’ so big, she is. Still can’t get over how much she’s grown since I been ‘ere.”

“I imagine they were glad to see you,” I say evenly.

Eggsy gave a grin, the first of one I have seen in a long while. It looks so familiar, yet so foreign. “Yeah. Mum was in a right state. Fussed over every’fing, she did. Made me sit down and eat a proper meal, practic’lly followed me into the shower to make sure I washed up.”

“To be fair, you were rather rank.”

The comment slips from my mouth before I can stop to think about it, and it hangs in the air for a moment like a new baby bird, unsure how to fly.

Eggsy’s expression is surprised, almost taken aback. He stares at me for a moment, speechless.

I am about to consider beating a hasty retreat when, finally, he laughs. It is not harsh or even forced, but a genuine, good-natured laugh. It is full, but short-lived, a room like this not being capable of sustaining anything so jovial as humor. But even when it subsides, Eggsy’s face has softened, has the lingering hint of a smile.

“Right charmer, you are,” he says, and there is a hint of teasing in his tone. His eyes, though tired, give a mischievous glint, and it stuns me how readily this particular thing grips at the roots of my person, what a visceral reaction I have to it.

This does not show on my face, of course. I have long since schooled myself to betray next to no emotion involuntarily. Only Harry was ever able to discern when I was consternated, afraid, delighted, anything. Only he was able to see past my perpetually unimpressed veneer. Eggsy does not possess that insight.

As I stand there, trying to parse out my own reaction, Eggsy’s expression shifts again. The humor drops from his face, and he looks more like he did when I first entered: expectant, almost anxious. He watches me closely, taking in my attire, my stance, my stoic expression.

“You stayin’?” he asks.

I slide out of my reverie and look at him again. His hands are curled slightly at his sides, not fists but anxious almost-clenching. I let my eyebrows drift down to emulate the beginnings of a frown.

“No,” I say, finally. “I am going home tonight.”

 “Ah.” It sounds disappointed. “Well, I . . .”

“Yes?”

“I just . . . I enjoyed . . . last night. I liked hearing about . . . about Harry.” Pause. “I was hoping that . . . well, maybe. . . .”

I almost sigh. I come so bloody close.

“Did you sleep last night?”

“No.”

I adjust my jacket where it hangs over my arm and nod my head to indicate behind me. I turn heel.

“Come along, then.”

I do not look behind me. Eggsy wordlessly gets up and follows me out.

 

**-KM-**

 

A black Kingsman cab is waiting for us at the curb when we step outside the front doors of HQ and into the night. My driver, Agent Dailey, gets out and opens one of the passenger doors for us; he makes no comment as I gesture Eggsy to proceed me inside. Dailey thinks this is strange, I know, but it is not his place to say. Like Kay, Dailey had originally come from another department – in his case, Asset Extraction— but was plucked for this position when the world shifted. It was unfair to him in many respects; though he was a former body guard and accustomed to this sort of work, he was a true fieldman if I ever saw one. We had worked closely on several assignments, and he was previously accustomed to exchange words freely with me.

Not so now. His expression is as silent as his voice as I instruct him to take Eggsy and I to my flat.

We pass the ride in silence. I pull out a small tablet and stylus from my pocket and check my inbox. Kay has already sent my schedule for tomorrow, and I make notes. Eggsy stares resolutely out of his window.

Dailey pulls up on my street, just three doors down from my flat, as required. He lets me out and Eggsy follows. I nod once to Dailey, sure and solemn, and he understands me immediately. Eggsy and I stand still on the pavement and watch as Dailey drives away.

I wait until the black cab has rounded the corner before looking down at Eggsy. He is not uncommonly short, but I am rather tall. Looking down at him is inevitable.

I did, after all, have to bend down to whisper my threat into his ear.

Eggsy turns his head from where he too was watching the car roll down the street and out of sight. He turns again to look up at me, but I have already shifted my gaze. I step away from him deliberately, and walk briskly down the row of houses until I arrive at my door. I both hear and feel Eggsy come up behind me.

I let us into my flat, disabling the alarm with practiced ease. In the entry-way, I shrug off my jacket, which I had donned once again before we entered the Kingsman cab. I pull out one of the many coat-hangers from inside the entryway closet and place the jacket there, knowing that Kay will send someone by tomorrow to retrieve it for care. Reach up with one hand and pull at the half-windsor of my steel grey tie, loosening it. Eggsy is still standing behind me, hanging back it seems, not quite at ease in this space. I turn my head and look over my shoulder at him briefly. He is examining his reflection in the hallway mirror, as if not accustomed to seeing it. It occurs to me that this could be the first time he’s looked in a mirror for days.

I face forward again and wander from the hallway into the living room. I pass the rectangle of neatly arranged matching sofas and walk over to the built-in bar. Though I do not generally make use of this feature of my home, I keep the bar stocked. The shelves for liquor are glass and paneled by a mirror. I consider our options for drink, and find Eggsy in the reflection.

He has shuffled out of the entry hallway slowly. His expression, as he surveys the room before him, is one of intense curiosity; I can almost see the machinations of his mind as he takes everything in, processes it, draws conclusions. The neatness of everything. The shelves upon shelves of books. The scant furniture, all the same style. Unlike the majority of people, I do not decorate for the benefit of others; I don’t know that I decorate at all. Decoration implies a certain frivolousness to design, an ornamentation. There is almost nothing ornamental in my home. Everything has a purpose, is useful, and is merely arranged to be accommodating. There is no real color theme; the floors are wood, what can be seen of the walls is white, and the sofas are a dark, blue-grey. The bar is black marble. The slice of kitchen that can be seen from the living room is white.

On the whole, I have been told that my residence looks stark and uninviting.

This is not a sentiment I share; but it is, presently, too quiet.

I reach up and grab a box of long matches from one of the top shelves. I twist around and the movement catches Eggsy’s attention. I toss him the box and he catches it easily.

“There is a log in the grate, and yesterday’s paper on the coffee table,” I tell him, nodding to it. “Start a fire.”

Eggsy hops to, and I turn back to my selection of liquors. Eventually, I choose an Irish whisky, filling two glasses with about two fingers of the stuff each.

I take the glasses with me to the middle of the living room. I set one down on the long, dark wooden coffee table and set back onto one of the long couches arranged in an incomplete square around it. I watch Eggsy kneeling by the grate, poking at the fire and tending to the wood.

After a minute, Eggsy rises from his crouch, satisfied, it seems. The wood has begun to catch and small flames are curling at the edges. The murmur of the fire is fine, but it will strengthen soon enough. Eggsy turns to me, and I gesture at the drink sitting on the coffee table.

“Ta,” Eggsy says, voice tired and a bit rough. He snags the glass with the tips of his fingers, and wanders over to the other side of the coffee table, settling down on the sofa directly across from me. An interesting choice. It is a less intimate arrangement of our figures, with the expanse of dark wood between us, but also more so. It requires us to look directly at each other.

I do so, unwaveringly as Eggsy takes a drink. His throat bobs, and I spy that small beauty mark  from before. I wait for a beat of silence after he swallows before speaking. And there is no pretense in my words, no beating around the bush. It is late in the day, and subtlety does not suit me.

“What do you want to know?”

Eggsy lowers his glass so that he is holding it in both hands. He turns it once, watching the liquid rolling around.

“Everything. Anything.”

I consider this request. I had expected as much. Though telling him everything is beyond the question for a multitude of reasons, I understand that limitless information is not necessarily what he needs. Eggsy came here because he wants someone to paint a portrait of Harry Hart, full and shining and nuanced. He needs someone else to talk about Harry, to talk about him in a vibrant, vital way. He wants a living, breathing history.

I tilt my head, lean back in my seat. My long body stretches, and I shift my legs so that they cross at the knee. It does not escape my notice that Eggsy catalogs the movement, eyes shifting over my form briefly. I hum low in my throat, more for his benefit, as if I am thinking; I am not. I already know what I will tell him.

“Has Harry told you about Argentina?”  
           

We converse long into the evening, though not as late as I expected. I ply Eggsy with drink, eventually just bringing the bottle of whisky over to the coffee table. Around ten, his eyes begin to grow heavy, his blinking prolonged. By eleven, he is swaying in his seat, nearly nodding off.

I finish the rest of my drink and set my glass down on the table. 

“I think it’s time you went to bed.”

Eggsy merely nods sleepily, slowly. “Yeah . . . yeah, all right.”

I stand and move over to where he is sitting. Without pausing to think whether or not it is necessary, I lean down and grip him gently but firmly by the arms, hoisting him up. He rises without protest. He is fairly limp and languid as I arrange one of his arms over my shoulders, and put a hand around his waist.

It is this way that I guide him up the stairs to the second floor of my flat, down the hallway and past the master into the guest bedroom. It has been unoccupied for quite some time and, like the rest of the house, it has been mostly unattended as of late. There is a faint sheet on dust on the east-facing window sill and the single, unadorned desk; but I changed the bedclothes recently, and they are clean.

Eggsy is completely complacent as I pull back the bed-covers. I contemplate, for a moment, making him shuck his trousers and shirt—but quickly dismiss the idea. Instead, I simply push him back until he is sitting on the bed, and then kneel down to tend to his shoes. He makes no comment as I undo his laces and slip his trainers off one-by-one. He is probably nearly asleep, so close to the edge that he cannot make sense of his being or surroundings; he probably doesn’t even realize what I’m doing. And he probably won’t remember.

I can’t shake how terribly intimate it feels, though. I hold one ankle and gently pull off a trainer, setting it beside me. I resist the almost innate urge to put my hand under the arch of Eggsy’s foot.       Like a lover’s touch.

It’s actually difficult to explain exactly how taboo that would be.

Once his shoes are off and placed neatly together by the bed, I help him hoist his legs up onto the bed. I lean over him and retrieve the edge of the comforter from where I had thrown it back, drawing it back over him. His eyes are closed when I bring it ‘round his shoulders. 

I look down at him, in the moon-lit dark of the bedroom. His face, restful and exhausted, finally having lost all trace of expression and relaxing into a deep slumber.

Instinctively, I reach out my hand and gently touch my fingers to his cheek. I cannot berate myself for the gesture; it’s simple, affectionate. Unguarded. My fingers are dry, lithe and long, skimming over young, smooth, warm skin.

I am about to draw my hand away, when Eggsy shifts suddenly. He does not open my eyes, but turns his head so that his full cheek falls into my open palm, leaning into my touch. His mouth twitch, and it can feel it against my palm as he nuzzles at it.

I stand there, frozen, for a few solid seconds. My heart goes frighteningly still in my chest.

Then, deftly, as gently as I can, I withdraw my hand from his cheek. 

 

 


	5. The Trappings of Sentiment, Part II

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I know “skullcap” is the common name for a flowering herb (Scutellaria lateriflora), but I’ve heard it once used to refer to someone with a shaven head. In any case, that is the context in which I’m using it here.
> 
> Posts, as per usual, will not be regular. I am starting up my graduate studies, so I don't expect to have a lot of writing time. Editing time is also in short supply, I'm afraid. Please be patient. I have this entire story planned out, so I know where it's going, it's just a matter of fleshing it out properly.

My body rouses me early the next morning.

My mind isn’t ready to wake up, still intent on following whatever dream it had been chasing; but my body stirs with an almost electric force. My eyes snap open. I am slightly disoriented.

The dark contours of my bedroom soon become clear enough, however. I look at the digital clock on my bedside table and see that it is just after six. High time to wake up, really.

Even as I rise, pulling myself from under the covers, I can feel my mind rebel, creaking as if stiff. I am tired. Exhausted, even. I slept for at least six hours, which is more than I had slept in the first days of my being Arthur; only now, though, does my exhaustion seem to weigh upon me fully. I do not want to get up. I do not want to stand, to move around and put on my clothes.

I want to get back into bed, close my eyes, and . . .

The realization of my own moroseness livens me instantly, and I blink once, hard.

After that, the morning is simpler. In the dark, I walk to the window and press my hand against it, testing the outside temperature. Then, I find a shirt, a worn hooded jumper, and a pair of jogging shorts. I let myself out of my bedroom, into the hallway. I spare a glance down the darkened end of the hallway, towards the guest bedroom, but do not bother to check beyond that; the door is still closed, and it is not difficult to imagine that Eggsy is still sleeping.

Once downstairs, I pad in socked feet to the kitchen and pull down one of the plain white mugs from where it sits on the shelf. I fill it about a third of the way with water and drink it quickly, washing away the stickiness of sleep from my mouth. From the kitchen, I walk into the living room, towards the coat closet by the front door. It is nearly bare but for two large overcoats, a wind-breaker, and a pair of worn trainers. These last I put on, lacing them carefully before letting myself through the front door, outside.

It is still dark, the streets of London only lit by lamps at every third residence or so. It is slightly chillier than my inspection of the window led me to believe, but it will cease to matter soon enough.

I turn to the door and shove a small, nearly paper-thin piece of wood between the door and the frame; an old spy trick, something no one had yet bothered to teach the younger agents. Once I am assured of its inconspicuous and sturdy placement, I straight and direct my gaze down the street. There is a company car parked conspicuously at the curb a few flats down. I deliberately and give it a single nod, then jerk my head to the left.

After a moment, the driver-side door opens, and a figure in all-black steps out. He approaches with a deceptive air of casualness, his step even and congenial, as if walking up to meet a friend. As he draws nearer, I can see the haloed shine of his blonde hair as illuminated by the streetlamp.

“Gov,” the young man says as he approaches.

I give the smallest of nods at the code address; this young man has never been on my security detail before, but he’s been given the proper instruction, it seems. More to the point, I recognize him. When he stops about two meters from me, I look him over. Compared to his severe black-on-black attire, I feel rather underdressed in my jogging gear; however, I do not let that undermine my authority as I address him in turn. “Agent Lizann. I wasn’t expecting you. Are you not meant to be in training?”

Agent-in-training Mark Lizann nods. “Yes, sir. But Agent Kubenick has taken ill, and Commander Thornton thought this would be a good exercise.”

“I see. Then I assume Commander Thornton has appraised you of protocol?”

 Lizann nods again. “Route winding through the park, roughly 13 kilometers. Don’t be seen. Takes you about an hour and ten.”

 “ _Try_ not to be seen,” I correct. “And well shall see about that ten minutes.”

 

**-KM-**

              

When I return to my house an hour later, there is still no indication that Eggsy has stirred. The small piece of wood is still wedged in my door; nothing in the living room or kitchen has been moved.

It would not have bothered me, I think as take off my shoes and set them by the door, if Eggsy _had_ left while I was out. It wouldn’t have even bothered me if Eggsy had gotten up and began poking through my possessions. When I went out the door, I had barely given a thought to leaving Eggsy in my house by himself. There was next to no danger in him snooping: I kept nothing work-related there save for an emergency armory. Of myself, there was nothing to find.

I make my way back upstairs, taking care to tread quietly, although I suspect that Eggsy is the type to sleep through nearly anything. That deep, unconcerned sleep that the young have; sleep is still a passion they can throw themselves into. It is not yet a regular refuge from the world, or a queer, almost resentful obligation.

I don’t want to assume too much but, even in light of recent events, I doubt that Eggsy knows what true insomnia is like.

I return to my rooms and have a perfunctory shower. I shave the scruff away from my neck and jaw, and then take to the task of smoothing out the gritty hairs that have begun to peek through my scalp. It used to feel ridiculous to me, shaving my head, almost vain. Now, it’s merely ritual. It is another thing that defines me amongst my peers at Kingsman—although now I am, officially, peerless. Still; it is an identifier. Who is Merlin? Easy. Tall, severe-looking bloke with the skullcap. Few other agents cut such an unnerving figure: I am not concerned axiomatically with the niceties of being a gentleman, nor preoccupied with the pretense of gentility or softness. It sets me apart, not necessarily in the best of ways. It keeps me from looking too human.

An organization such as ours, in a time like this, does not need a leader who is overly human. In this way, I sometimes think that I may be the only suitable person for this job at present. I am unparalleled in the realm of compartmentalization. I know that, at the end of the day, the purpose of this organization is to save civilian lives, and to keep hidden from them the true extent of the world’s ugly insanity. We do the work that MI6, CIA, and intelligence agencies the world over cannot or will not. And someone needs to make those calls.

Having Demarais by my side has been good, in this short timespan. He has been exceedingly helpful; but I cannot continue to make such extensive use of him. The French office is suffering without his full attention; and a beast with two heads is a better thinker, but a clumsy hunter. Now that things are settling down—and I can finally say that, _yes_ , things are settling down just slightly—it would be feasible to let Demarais step down. I will need to do it, eventually. The current question is simply one of “when”.

When, indeed.

Eggsy does not wake while I shuffle about my house and prepare myself for the day. When I am about to step out the door at seven-twenty-five, I give one last glance back into my abode.

The books sit silent on their shelves. Only stillness peers back at me.

I close the door. In deference to Eggsy, I lock the manual lock, and set the digital ones to allow the exit of one more person before sealing up for the day. I do not replace the woodchip, but set it beneath my welcome mat, for later use.

When I approach the curb, a black King’s cab is already pulled up to meet me. A glance down the street reveals the back of a blonde head ducking into a similar unmarked car.

 

**-KM-**

 

I do not see Eggsy all day. He does not report in, and no access point registers him entering. The containment and clean-up of a sudden and unexpected bombing in Brussels takes the brunt of my attention all day; but the thought of Eggsy weighs heavy at the back of my mind. It’s unprofessional of me. I tuck the niggling concern away and focus on the tasks at hand.

I had intended to go and visit Harry that evening, but it is late by the time the crisis is mostly contained (contained enough, at least, for the rest of the world to handle it reliably). The hour rounds one a.m. by the time I leave my office. For once, the outer office is empty when I open my door. I told Kay to go home at ten, but by the looks of things, he may have just left; and, of course, he will be here the moment or well before I myself get here in the morning. I really need to talk to him about his hours. It isn’t healthy in someone his age.

Tucking this thought away for later, I call the garage and ask for my car to be brought around. Dailey is sitting stoically in the driver’s seat when I exit the building.

“Gov,” he says, stepping out to open the door for me. It’s ridiculous, this level of decorum; I am no delicate lady. Still, tradition, I suppose. I purse my lips briefly, but reply all the same. “Agent Dailey.”

“To the London Nest, then?”

The “London Nest” is the code name that Chester called his own flat in the city. Where Dailey picked up the phrase, I’m not sure. It’s another irritatingly remnant of the old Arthur lineage, another posh nuance. I haven’t figured out how to break Dailey of this particular tidbit yet.

“Please,” I said cordially, settling myself in the back.

Dailey nods and climbs once again into the driver’s seat. He must think it odd, me returning to my flat so late. Generally, I don’t see the point; any other night, I would have simply kipped in my office. It seems important to return tonight, though.

Dailey pulls out of the drive and begins the journey towards London. Through the partition, I can see his eyes shifting in the rearview mirror. They flick back to me once, then affix firmly to the dark road ahead.

“Pardon my asking, sir, but the lad all right?”

The question surprises me, on some level, but I am too exhausted to appreciate it fully. I try not to slump into the back seat. Though the query is completely out of the blue, there is no question as to whom the “lad” is.

“I don’t know,” I answer honestly. “We shall see.”

 

**-KM-**

 

Eggsy is no longer at my flat.

I can tell immediately, even before I walk through the door. Empty houses have a certain stillness to them. A quietness only mimicked by the dead. It probably goes without saying that I am familiar with this state in both houses and people.

I enter, flicking on the light. Everything in the entryway and sitting room looks exactly as I had left it. No books have been removed from their place on the shelves; the ashes from last night’s fire still sit in the grate; the two, conspicuous and empty tumblers still sit on the large, low coffee table.

I lay my suit-jacket over the back of one of the leather sofas that frames the coffee table, and walk around to retrieve the glasses. I pluck them up deftly and take them to the kitchen to be washed.

When I arrive at the kitchen, however, something makes me pause in the doorway.

Everything is pristine, as per usual. Everything stark, grey, black and white.

Everything, save for the single red cup sitting on the counter.

 

**-KM-**  

    

I do not expect to see Eggsy the next day. So, it is to my surprise when Kay knocks once, and then enters my office to announce that Unwin is here to see me.

The temptation to arch my eyebrow is great, but I school my features. I had been made aware of Eggsy’s presence in the building: I have the system set to where I am given notification of certain people entering and exiting. Eggsy had crossed the threshold of the east entrance at ten that morning, presumably here to see Harry. There was nothing in the queue for him as far as assignments went. Perhaps that was what he wanted to see me about?

He should have made an appointment, I think, just a tad irritably. Eggsy, though he is humble, has always thought himself above the rules that govern other people. It is sometimes not a conscious decision that he makes, to disregard protocol, nicety, or law. Eggsy acts according to his own moral code which, while fairly rigid and commendable, gives him considerable leeway to disobey the general rules by which the rest of the world operates.

And, sometimes, he acts out of emotion, for which there is no logic, and therefore no rules.

This, I know even before I see him, is the latter.

Kay is watching me intently, hands at rest by his sides. I have taken a long pause. Longer than necessary. Long enough that Kay’s hands give a single twitch, and I can see that he is considering whether or not to restate the message he has just conveyed.

Deliberately, I put down the stylus in my hand, setting it on my desk parallel to the tablet I was using it for. I shut down the screen, and turn my attention back to Kay. In lieu of signing my reply, I make a simple beckoning hand gesture.

Kay shows his acknowledgement, then turns sharply and steps back out. A moment later, I see his small, pale hand pushing the door open wider to admit the distinctly more burly form of Eggsy Unwin.

As Eggsy steps into the room, I make an obligatory appraisal of him. For once, I cannot say that he looks poorly. He looks fresh, his face washed, his hair combed. He is wearing civvies, the same sporty kind of outfit he’d been wearing the very first time I’d laid eyes on him. Smart polo, breathable zip-up, jeans, sort of clunky white trainers. I do realize he wears this sort of things because he is very comfortable in it and because it lets him hide—both of these traits are immediately apparent in his postures—but the clothes aren’t doing him any favors. He looks _very_ young.

In fact, he has the air about him of a schoolboy called into the headmaster’s office. He looks chagrinned, as if he was caught flicking boogers at a classmate. He does not look up at me until Kay closes the door and, when he does, there is the barest hint of a flush at the edges of his cheeks.

I struggle with keeping my eyebrows still. In my veins, my pulse picks up just a beat.

Eggsy shuffles closer, crossing the carpeted expanse of the room with a strange kind of meandering purposefulness. It isn’t as believable without JB yipping around his ankles.

Eggsy stops when he is two meters from my desk. Then he looks up. Deliberately.   

“’eyy,” he says, blandly.

If I had been expecting any particular kind of opening statement, it certainly wasn’t that.

“Hello.”

The greeting, I think, comes out a bit cold. Something in Eggsy’s eyes dims a little; if he looked unsure before, he looks subtly edgy now, as if he thinks he’s made a mistake. Fortunately, my good manners save us both.

“How are you?”

Eggsy blinks, his light green eyes bright. “Okay, actually,” he says. He takes a step closer.

“And Harry?”

I watch the set of Eggsy’s shoulders tighten slightly, watch his supple mouth purse. “He’s . . . he’s okay. Same.”

It is my turn for some platitude, but I let the pause hang instead. It gives me a moment to consider what this conversation (or lack thereof) might be about. It seems unlikely to me that Eggsy would stop by for no reason, even though one is not forthcoming. There is something he is dancing around, some objective he won’t yet yield to.

Being the adult in this situation, I suppose I am obliged to make this easier on him.

“Did you mean to ask me something, Eggsy?”

I manage to modulate my voice into something that is not irritable. The question comes across smoothly; it elicits a very minute shift in his posture. He looks up at me furtively, then glances back down. A very light blush creeps across his cheeks.  

“I was wondering if you wouldn’t mind some company for lunch, actually.”

The silence that ensues then is not calculated.

I open my mouth once, and then close it. My brow creases slightly. I open my mouth again, and this time something sensible formulates, albeit slowly. “That . . . that is kind of you to offer, Eggsy. But I am afraid I have a tight schedule today.”

Eggsy’s eyes widen a fraction and he flushes fully. He shrinks back into himself, shoulders hunching. “Oh. Right, ‘course— erhm—”

He stops. For some reason, he is humiliated. I don’t understand.

Eggsy licks his lips and tries again, already moving to leave. “Perhaps, if I—“

“However, if you would like to talk, I anticipate being finished at a reasonable hour today.”

The words leave my mouth before I can fully consider them. It’s an uncharacteristic outburst, and I cannot say where it came from. Why would I freely offer Eggsy my time? A part of me feels as though I owe him something, certainly, but another part of me feels that I am crossing a very fine line. Is this wise?

If it isn’t, I cannot take it back now.

Eggsy looks up, first surprised, then hopeful. “Yeah?”

I nod. There is nothing for it. “Nineteen-hundred hours. I’ll be out front.”

 

**-KM-**

 

Eggsy is already there, waiting for me when I step out of the building that evening.

He stands by the cab that I ordered some five minutes ago. His hands are shoved into the pockets of his zip-up, head tilted downwards. Next to the plainly but impeccably dressed Agent Dailey, who stands stiffly beside him in what is almost parade-rest, Eggsy looks uncomfortably out-of-place.

It occurs to me as I approach them that scenery is sometimes everything, and this would not have looked at all out of place along certain streets of London at night.

I send both men the barest of nods before sliding into the back of the cab. Eggsy walks around to the other side and opens the door, climbing into the seat next to me. Dailey sends me a look through the rear-view mirror as he settles behind the wheel. 

“The Shoppe, please.”

The journey to London is, once again, silent. It allows me to further wallow in the trepidation that has been plaguing the back of my mind all afternoon since Eggsy departed my office.

To my credit, I did not allow myself to ponder over it much; but I did allot a few minutes between meetings to consider what, exactly, I was doing. What I might be encouraging. In the end, I came to no real conclusions—except for the decision to meet on relatively neutral ground. Inviting him back to my flat seems unpropitious; what transpired the night before was not, in the strictest sense, inappropriate. Unadvisable and unprecedented, yes. But not _wholly_ inappropriate.

It was a human response, on my part. I was responding to his grief, hungry thing that it is. I am still responding to it. Such a wretched emotion is often magnetic, even more so when the afflicted person hands you their vulnerability on a silver platter—a meal in return. This time, however, I am endeavoring not to feed either of our hungers. I do not want to be a source of relief from something deemed so immeasurable. For one, I don’t think I can. For another, it would be unbearable.

And so, we go to the shoppe. I reason that, from here, one of two things can happen: after a drink, I can concede to more not-wholly-inappropriate behavior, and we can walk to my house—it is only a few blocks—or we can go our separate ways. I use my keys to unlock the front, and my biological credentials to gain access to the back rooms. I feel Eggsy behind me as we climb the stairs together, his distance measured. Despite his reckless nature, it seems that he too is willing to bow to a sense of precariousness.

The street outside has some light foot traffic, but the interior of the shoppe is completely still. I wordlessly cut around the displays of materials and accoutrements, leading Eggsy to the stairs behind the counter. At the top of the stairs is a landing with three doors. The door to the right leads to the main chamber—the “Round Table”, as it were. The door across the narrow hallway on the left side leads to a slightly smaller room, with a proper desk for Jonathan and his bookkeeping in one corner, and a liquor cabinet in another corner. It is this room that I lead Eggsy into, gesturing for him to sit in one of the chairs by the window while I make our selection.  

I make the deliberate decision to pour us each a single drink, and leave the bottle in the cabinet, though the cabinet itself I leave open. I only intend one drink but, well: it’s nice to have options.

When I turn to face the rest of the room, I see that Eggsy has deposited himself into one of the comfy chairs that sits by the window. He accepts the snifter of brandy with a misleadingly insouciant grace.

“Ta, ‘fanks.”

I hum in my throat. There is a similar chair almost catty-corner to Eggsy’s; it’s too close, I think, but I don’t want to make a show of moving it. I sit down, and arrange my legs so that our feet are not in danger of brushing.

Outside the window, a streetlight flickers to life. It’s not fully dusk yet, the sky still smoky orange from the slowly setting sun. The light is angled to cast iridescent rays across Eggsy’s chest.

“’Fanks for letting me stay over last night.”

I swill my drink. “You are welcome.”

“It’s just . . . it’s been hard and I . . . I appreciate that. You.”

I hum again, softer this time.

Across from me, there is a flash as Eggsy’s snifter shifts in the sun’s setting rays. He considers the liquid momentarily then sips. The series of gestures is so refined, they look faintly ridiculous on him. He stares again into his glass.

“You’ve got a nice place.”

“It’s not very personable, I’m told.”

I know immediately the question that leaps to life in Eggsy’s eyes, the one he wants to ask and the one he (miraculously) manages not to. Instead, he recovers and shoots me a grin; it’s wry, teasing slightly. His eyes crinkle slightly at the corners. “It’s you, innit?”

I tilt my head at him. He either doesn’t realize what he’s said, or he doesn’t realize the full implications of it. “It is.”

“I like your red cup, though. Bit unexpected, that color. _That_ don’t seem like you,” he muses indulgently, “what with all the white. Is it for when you’re feelin’ cheeky?”

I feel something like a prickle of heat creep up my neck. There is something in his smile . . . unless I am imagining it. I’m not prone to doing that, though. Falsely interpreting another’s emotions is very dangerous, in this line of work. I have learned not to make that mistake.

It is unexpected, however, and therefore confusing. I am not sure where it came from; it seems incongruous with the rest of the feelings and intimacies he has shown me. I anticipated that this would be a solemn conversation, continuing the pattern we have thus far established; and it is _very_ subtle, more subtle than I would think him capable of. I could overlook it. I probably should.

I narrow my eyes just slightly, letting my mouth take the ghost of a smile. “I’m always cheeky.”

This response seems to please him. He gives a soft, throaty chuckle, taking another drink of brandy. The amusement in his eyes dims, however, as his gaze moves to the window, peering into the settling dusk. “Say, Merlin?”

“Mm?”

“How many of Harry’s stories do you know?”

I feel myself stiffen at this, although I would be lying if I said I didn’t see it coming. I create a pause for consideration, before lobbing a question back at him:—

“Why?”

Eggsy continues to look outside. The light has yellowed further, and lights the golden flecks in his hair, makes his eyes seem an unearthly color. “I’m interested, is all,” he says, softly.  “I want to hear more of them.” He turns to look at me again; when he does so, he shifts his legs, bringing them in closer proximity to my own. I watch his left foot come within centimeters of my right ankle, though he seems not to notice. “How d’you know? Was you with ‘im, all those times?”

“In some form or other. Usually on the comms.” A flashback from the night before, unbidden, rises to the surface of my mind. I remember putting him to bed, his limp, helpless form, everything about him made sweet with sleep. My hand at his ankle, milky white with soft curls of dark blonde hair.

“You ever do missions together?”

I shift my ankle away. “In our younger days.”

My tone is slightly clipped, my answers direct and unembellished. When I was telling him stores by firelight the other day, I had no qualms about my intently detailed narrations; somehow, in this moment, I feel protective of those stories. I shared them too easily before, and now Eggsy is eager to take them all from me. Something about this exchange has made me uncomfortable, and he can see it.

He leans over, and set his drink down on the floor. Then he puts his elbows on his bent knees, lacing his hands in front of him as if in supplication. He levels a serious gaze at me. “Look. I didn’ want to talk about anything in particular. We don’t ‘ave to talk about Harry. I just want to talk to someone who isn’t a nurse or a head-shrink.” He plucks up his glass again and leans back. “That guy was a load of shit, by the way.”

A snort of laughter escapes me. “I’m fairly certain that quality isn’t listed on his credentials.”

Eggsy snickers, grin blooming anew. “See? You can be right pleasant to talk to when you’re not bein' a sour git.”

I roll my eyes. “What charming words.”

The curve of Eggsy’s smile sharpens. He wets his lips in an unconscious gesture.  “I can be fucking charming.”

I swallow, and tap the rim of my glass with a long finger. “I’m sure.” Pause. “Don’t you talk to Roxanne? I understand you two are close.”

Eggsy’s mouth twist into something fond and winsome. “Fucking love Roxie, but even she just looks at me with sad eyes nowadays.” His expression clouds. “I don’t like feeling shitty all the time. Don’t do me no good. But I can’t help it—most of the time, I just ‘appen to feel like shit.”

“You’re grieving.”

This I say without thinking, matter of factly. It is evidently the case; but Eggsy’s eyes flash at the words, and his brow threatens. 

“I’m not— I 'aven’t given up on him—!”

I hold up the hand that is not cradling my brandy, a universal gesture of placation. “It’s still a loss, of sorts,” I tell him levelly. “It’s fine, Eggsy.”

“It just helped me. To hear you talk about Harry. To hear about him, so full of life. Made it easier to look at him, lying there, still as death. Didn’t seem so bleak, thinking about those stories. . . .”

He looks away again, unable to meet my gaze. This is an admission, I can see, albeit a tacit one. He can freely say that he _wants_ to hear more; he cannot openly admit that he _needs_ it.

He does not have to, though. It is a unique thing that one finds in Eggsy. Despite his circumstances, his upbringing, his hardships, he is still so emotionally raw. He is a superb liar, but a terribly actor; he can adopt a false truth so readily that one might even think he himself believes it, but a false emotion? It hangs around his neck like an albatross, a burden evident to everyone. He feels everything intensely. It must be wonderful. It must be terrible.

It _is_  terrible for me. Because, though he hasn’t actually asked me for anything, the request, the desire is there, burning and needy, as if he was on his knees begging mee. I could refuse it, certainly, refuse to indulge him. It would be wise, given the twists and turns of this exchange. I don’t need to be spending any more time in Eggsy’s company than is strictly necessary. I don’t know that it would be good for him; I doubt it would be good for me.

There is only one person I can blame my response on. 

“I can tell you more.”

 

**-KM-**

 

This concession on my part does despicable work.

Eggsy’s face lights up, a tormented mix of hope and anxiety that I can barely look at. It’s such a wretched cocktail of emotions, one I was once familiar with, and I am sick with knowledge that I put it there.

So, I have to temper it. “But not tonight,” I tell him, and watch him deflate like a punctured balloon. I keep my voice as even as possible, when I amend further. “Tomorrow, perhaps.”

Though he obviously wants this conversation to continue, Eggsy shows some restraint. He concedes to wait until tomorrow, but he makes sure to schedule a time and location. Evening. He offers up his residence, the flat he lives in by himself. This, again, is something I should refuse, an intimate setting. I am tired, though. I cannot maneuver out of it. The curse of a delicate situation is that the fragility cannot be openly acknowledged, and so all things must be done clandestinely. I cannot tell him the setting is too intimate without acknowledging that there is already something like intimacy between us, and I am trying to preclude the growth of it.

When we finish our drinks, we rise together and head out of the shoppe. Dailey is standing around on the pavement when we exit the front doors; he drops and digs at the butt of a cigarette with his heel before standing to attention. Another Arthur might have admonished him for that; I, on the other hand, would have liked a drag before he set the bloody thing out.

I turn to Eggsy once more. “Do you need a lift?”

Eggsy shakes his head, pulling up the zip of his black jacket. He puts his hands in his pockets. “Nah, ‘fanks, gov. I need a walk.” He gives me a wan, but pleased smile.

I rest my hand on his shoulder, giving it a small squeeze, allowing myself this one paternal gesture.

Eggsy gives a tiny shiver. It’s something I would have rather not noticed.

Once I have watched Eggsy walk down  the street, I turn back to Dailey. “HQ, please.”

His dark brow raises, but he says nothing.

 

I sit in the chair, staring.

Harry is sleeping. At least, I think his mind is not as awake as during the day. I don’t think he is ever truly asleep or truly awake, but in daylight hours the doctors have told me it is safe to assume that he is at least vaguely aware, even if his vitals do not seem to change.

But it is late, just rounding eleven. He is, most likely, as asleep as he’ll ever be. So I do not feel rude or self-conscious about sitting in the single, hard plastic chair in his room, and simply staring at him.

Facial hair grows more slowly when the rest of the body’s metabolic processes have been retarded; but there is a whisper of a five-o’clock shadow around his jaw. I wonder how long it will get before I feel the need to tend to it again.

My lips are dry. I lick them once.

“Is this what you want?”

Silence.

I was not expecting a response. I _wasn’t_. That would be utterly ludicrous.

My hands tremble. I clasp them together.

“Is this how I am meant to take care of him?”

The light of his heart monitor blinks, a steady red dot.

“What should I do?”

Harry’s eyelids flicker.

I slump forward. Let out a shaking breath.

I don’t know why I’m here. Why I’m asking these questions to someone who may not even hear them, much less be able to answer.

But it’s been a very long time since I’ve felt this unsure about anything, since I have been _this desperate_ for advice, for reassurance. I feel it, almost like a physical burning, somewhere behind my sternum. I feel I need it, and there’s no one to give it to me. I can’t talk about this, obviously, not with anyone else. I have no confidants.

This is what it means to be the king. You have no peers, and therefore no true friends or intimates. Yet, from this place of removal, it is your duty to hear the confessions and concerns of the people who look up to you. In this instance, I must give spiritual guidance without the luxury of receiving any.

I think about Eggsy, sitting in that room with the setting sun pouring over him, the subtle shift of his expressions as he mulled over his amber drink. The way the light gave him a halo, casting his already handsome features in an even more flattering light. His skin, smooth and blemished only by those small, secretive little moles. I think about the downturn of his mouth, his reddened chapped lips, the glint of a stray tear at the corner of his eye when a sudden emotion struck him. 

I’ve said it before: there is something angelic about Eggsy.

There is even something angelic about his self-absorbed grief. It’s so pure. So unfettered and direct. He seeks out solace in me only as an afterthought, though I’m almost flattered by it—that I’ve made it into his limited attention. I don’t think he’s even talked to Roxie as he has to me.

Though Harry is not gone from us—and with any luck, he won’t be for a long time—I  was right to call Eggsy’s suffering grief. He is grieving; it is a loss, of sorts. And such grief cannot be contained. It’s natural that Eggsy wants to share with someone. Preferably someone who was as close to Harry as Eggsy imagined he might, one day, be. 

You see, it’s true: what Eggsy nearly lost when Harry was shot was great. I don’t even know if I can put a name to it. Not right now, at least. What was Harry to Eggsy? Everything?

If that is true, then, yes: Eggsy nearly lost everything when Harry was shot. 

But so did I.

What else do you call a soul who has been by your side, fighting the good fight with you for twenty-odd years? Who has seen you grow up and grow old, who has begun to grow old with you? Who has met your sarcasm with wry humor, who has returned fire for you, who has both stitched you up and endured you playing nurse-maid, who has fed you when you couldn’t feed yourself? Who has spent many nights with you, waiting for movement, and many more pouring over snifters of amber drink and a quiet fire, saying nothing but with the best of company? Who has had many lovers but has never had another one of you? Who has known you better than anything or anyone, better than God?

What else would you call that?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Unreliable narrator much?


	6. Trinary System

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> I'm not dead! First semester of grad school was rough.

_“You’ve been busy.”_

_The wind whistles quietly over my scalp from behind, lapping hot at my neck. A bead of sweat trickles down from behind my ear. The street below is quiet, the stalls shut up, the bazaar having closed shop right around sunset._

_Harry steps up close. I can’t see him properly—it’s too dark, and he is just barely in my periphery—but I can feel him._

_There is movement in the street below. A person—a woman— moves like a charcoal-grey ghost down the length of the street, hugging to the walls. A dog barks in the distance. Another whip of wind rushes my faces, fills my nostrils. We’re in Bukhara._

_Harry laughs, and it is low, warm. “Busy, selling all my secrets.”_

_I shift my shoulder. There is a gun holstered there, Kingsman’s version of a Winchester bolt-action. An itch has begun in my right shoulder, somewhere behind my scapula. It’s familiar, the same itch I always get when I know my shot is coming up._

_I crouch down. The stars above us glow like white-hot pinpricks against the ghastly fabric of black sky. There is a sliver of a crescent moon hanging low, sharp as a sickle. I un-shoulder the gun and begin setting up, getting into position._

_Harry crouches too. His knee brushes the back of my thigh._

_There is movement further down the alleyway. It’s caught my eye. I load the gun, and peer through the telescopic sight to zero in on the movement._

_A shadow. Or so it seems, until it moves again._

_Harry’s hand is on my shoulder, grip firm and somehow hot. His voice is so close, lips against the shell of my ear. “Careful. Easy.”_

_I don’t respond. I can’t. All my attention is refocused on the movement, the slip of a shadow that ebbs and flows as it moves down the street. It’s darker than the woman, with no real shape. It’s darker than the darkness, like an inky black puddle moving across the ground. I track it, moving the sight of my rifle with its silent progress. The crook of my index finger rests on the trigger._

_Harry presses a kiss to my ear, just a dry brush of lips. “Steady.”_

_A shiver rakes through my chest despite the heat, but my hand doesn’t shake. My eyes are firmly trained on the moving black mass._

_“Now.”_

_—and suddenly, it’s daylight._

_The night is ripped from the scene like a shroud, exposing the blinding sun. I want to shy away, by my eyes are still fixed on the ground._

_It’s not a shadow. Not a liquid, moving blackness._

_It’s a boy._

_It’s a little boy, not more than six or seven and not a stitch on, just naked limbs splayed out in the dirt, pale English skin smooth and splattered with blood. Too much blood. Much more than a single gunshot would produce._

_“Eggsy.”_

_I turn. Harry is on his feet, looking down at the body below. His face is gone. He has no eyes, no mouth, but he is looking and screaming and screaming—_

**_“EGGSY—!”_ **

 

**-KM-**

 

The sound of shuffling wakes me.

In truth, I was not really asleep. I awoke in the infirmary around 3:30 am, the dream burned into my retinas, and couldn’t go back to sleep. I couldn’t sit still. I left Harry and went to the natatorium, swum laps until I was ready to collapse. Even after that, I couldn’t convince my body of the rest it needed. I showered. Shaved. Went to my office and changed into one of the many pressed suits that Kay keeps in the closet by the door.

I am sitting in a chair in the farthest, darkest corner of the room with my eyes closed, listening to the steady, dumbing thump of blood through my skull. It’s less of a shuffling and more a bare whisper of a sound that snatches my attention.

When I open my eyes, it is still to a dark room. The blinds have been drawn since yesterday and so, though it is about a quarter past seven, no daylight spills in. I am sitting in complete shadow, my black suit shielding me further.

There is movement about five meters to my left, at my desk. A figure, fine-haired and slender, is leaning over my desk.

I clear my throat. “You don’t have to do that.”

I recognize my mistake before I have even finished speaking. The figure—Kay—whirls around with ridiculously fast reflexes and, before I can say anything further, draws a gun seemingly from thin air and has the sight trained on me with unshaking aim. Because of course my secretary has a gun.

Bemusedly, I raise my hands. I incline my head. My voice, when I speak, betrays none of the apprehension I feel—that I would be foolish _not_ to feel because, secretary though he may be, Kay is a fully-trained agent and former ballistician, and I have every confidence that he would shoot me if I gave him a good reason.

“Andrew.”

The young man’s form shifts, and he bends over my desk to turn on the lamp.

The light that it casts is minimal outside the small circle it shines on the desk surface, but evidently it is enough to illuminate my face. As recognition flits across his face, Kay lowers his firearm; he does not look the least bit chagrinned, though polite apology gives his pale blonde eyebrows a slight slant. He flips the safety back on the gun and returns it to his shoulder holster, seamlessly hidden under his trim suit-jacket.

Now that I am not in danger of being perforated, I lower my hands. _I’m sorry to have startled you,_ I sign to Kay.

_I’m sorry to have almost shot you,_ Kay signs back, and there is a hint of wry humor in his ordinarily expressionless mouth. _I wasn’t expecting you; I thought you went home._

I shake my head, unable to contain a small, tired smile. _Managed to give you the slip for once, did I?_

It is entirely too dark for me to see much color, but I could have sworn that, in that moment, I saw Kay blush. He drops his eyes briefly, long blonde lashes catching the lamplight.

I feel my eyebrows raise fractionally before I master my expression. I reach into my breast pocket and pull out my personal device, navigating to my office controls. I slide the bar to turn on the lights.

When I look back up at Kay, I see that he has reverted back to his effortlessly stoic demeanor. As he is standing near my desk, my eyes are drawn to see what he was doing before pulling a gun on me. My desk is seldom actually “messy”, but it does become akimbo at times; half of the desk has been straightened back to its pristine order, presumably the shuffling I heard. There is a neat stack of three tablets on the side of my desk closest to Kay.

I rise from the cushioned chair in which I had been sitting and mulling over my thoughts in the dark, and approach my desk, reaching out to pick up one of the tablets and then looking to Kay—who, to my slight surprise, appeared to be watching me with more care than usual.

_Archival materials you requested, sir,_ Kay signed. _Second tablet is the new weapons blueprints that R &D would like to have back as soon as possible. The most pressing design is for a biochemical agent; I have annotated the document so that it is easily readable. There is also a budget request to outfit the extraction team with upgraded tactical gear. The third tablet contains mission reports from Safir, Bors, and Gaheris. Director Tshiswaka has a special issue to discuss, sent via email and encrypted attached. Additionally, you have received a formal request for Unwin to continue Knight training and—_

Almost involuntarily, I divert my eyes from Kay’s hands, and do not see the rest of his sentence; my eyes instead fix on the stack of tablets, a cold pebble of apprehension dropping into my stomach—

But the feeling subsides almost as soon as it sets in. Really, this is not a surprise. I have been expecting this.

When I look back to Kay, he has stopped signing; I make an apologetic gesture for him to continue.

_There is also a memorandum from Deputy Director Lauterbach. It seems he has lodged a formal complaint._

Wonderful. I pluck up the tablet in question and unlock it, swiping through to the taskboard, which shows me the most pressing issues as Kay has described them. I find the memo and open it. One might see it as courtesy that Lauterbach sent me notice of his launching a formal complaint to the board of directors, but I see it for what it truly is: petty spitefulness. How that man ever made it into Kingsman would be utterly beyond me if it were not for the fact that Chester had been such a prick.

Smoothing out the snarl of dislike that threatens my mouth, I look back up at Kay. Though I make a point to sign at Kay whenever possible, we’ve been working so closely together that our communication sometimes transcends structured language. I do not know whether it is that we are both adept at reading people, or that we are simply well-suited to read each other, but I’ve been utilizing it more and more as of late. I tilt my head at him, and the meaning is not lost: _Anything else?_

Kay blinks his long blonde eyelashes at me. His expression appears blank, but to me his pensiveness is clear. There is a moment of hesitation, lasting only a second or two. Then, as if thinking better of something, he shakes his head.

_You are scheduled to tour the naval facilities this afternoon and inspect the new submarines. There are a several more minor items, but they are all on the taskboard,_ Kay signed. He looked pointedly at the office door, indicating his intention to leave through it. _Do you require anything?_

I considered. _If you could ring the mess for a fresh pot of tea, that would be wonderful_.

 

**-KM-**

 

When Kay leaves the room, I sit behind my desk and finish reorganizing where he had left off. It does not take much, a simple straightening of my desk-set. It gives me a few moments to collect myself before I dive into the list Kay has left me with.

Ordinarily, I start my day with the most taxing items and work through to lesser matters, if it can at all be helped. However, I have the beginnings of what promises to be a rather unpleasant headache, and decide to wait for warm, caffeinated beverage to arrive.

I pick up the first tablet and navigate the taskboard. The blueprints from R&D look promising—as in, difficult to parse through but not likely to cause me any undue pain. This particular task is actually a vestige of my duties as Merlin; Arthur generally does not attend to the minute details of R&D planning. In fact, I do not know that Chester ever really knew what our science and technology divisions were up to; he barely glanced at the blueprints and budgets I vetted and sent his way for formal approval.

However, given that my replacement as Merlin is, for the time being, temporary, I still take it upon myself to retain some of my duties and I take full responsibility for Research and Development, as well as its sister departments. As such, I take my time vetting the new designs, including the proposition for the biochemical agent, during which time Kay brings in a tray with a fresh teapot.

Not taking my eyes from the screen, I nod my thanks as he sets the tray down. It is only once he has left the room that I happen to look over the top of the tablet and notice the other items on the tray, which I had not asked for: toast, jam, and a small covered bowl that I discover, upon further inspection, contains oatmeal.

Reaching over, I pour myself a cup of tea and eye the food somewhat doubtfully. It is not that I don’t appreciate the gesture—I do—I simply do not feel hungry. I should be, given my rigorous exercise this morning, but my appetite is elusive. The dream is still sitting at the back of my mind, and every time I barely graze it with my conscious mind, it sends a shiver of revulsion through me.

However, I do need to eat. That much is apparent.

I finish reviewing and making comments on the R&D blueprints and send them along. Between tasks I accept my fate and (somewhat grudgingly) select a slice of toast and spread jam across it. The sweetness of the jam makes my mouth water unpleasantly, like the precursor to vomit; but I swallow determinedly, and do not return to my work until I’ve eaten the whole slice.

This small morsel of food settles uneasily in my stomach as I approve budgets and go through mission reports. I almost get the impression that real hunger may be imminent; however, the feeling is vanquished immediately when I decide to have a look at Eggsy’s request.

I turn to my computer and pull up the document on the larger screen, trying not to grimace. The last time I saw one of these forms, I was in training for the Merlin position and it was on paper. It was one of the few forms that I was not required to know in explicit detail. The old Merlin, a perpetually cross-looking fellow with distressingly small eyebrows, asked me to look over the form, be familiar with its existence, and move on. There was no reason, he said, to know it well. Requests to resume training were almost unheard of, principally because failing any part of the Knight examination resulted in immediate and uncontestable dismissal. Truth be told, the form was mostly a formality. A person, if he felt wrongly rejected, could contest his (or her) dismissal, but there were never any grounds for real consideration. For one, there was usually only ever one Knight position up for grabs; two . . . well. I have yet to hear an argument that effectively combats the word “failure”.

It is this word that flashes through my mind as I review Eggsy’s request. He’s had help with this petition, I can tell. Not that Eggsy couldn’t fill it out to par by himself, but I recognize the writing of someone who is familiar with the system. Key words. Things to look for. Technically, the petition needs to be vetted by two officials before it reaches Arthur, including a Knight with tenure, and— ah, yes. I see he’s got Ector.

This comes as a slight surprise. Ector is no pushover. He would not endorse Eggsy unless he truly thought the lad had good reason to petition. Commander Thornton has also given his signature.

I scroll through the rest of the document, my chest tightening. I have known, somewhere in the back of my brain, that this would eventually come up; I have been biding my time, hoping every day that there would be enough to occupy Eggsy so that this request would not come. Now that it has, it puts me in one hell of a conundrum. In ordinary circumstances, I would reject Eggsy’s request outright. But, with all that has happened . . . things are slightly more complicated.

I concede that this is partially circumstantial, and partially my fault. Circumstantial, because of the whole Valentine business, with Eggsy and Roxie being the only two who could be relied upon to help at the time. I could have called in other Knights, but several had gone into deep cover some weeks ago, Ector was in America, and Percival in Estonia. Eggsy and Roxie were closest at hand, and so they were my slapdash team to save the world. This could not be helped.

However, my allowing Eggsy to stick around is problematic. In the crumbling world we came back to, the idea of not using every able-bodied person at my disposal seemed preposterous. _Of course_ , I sent Eggsy out on missions, missions adequate of his skill level. I let him behave as a Knight without actually bearing the title of one. I allowed him freedom above his clearance and rank, and now it has come back to bite me.

There is another problem with my rejecting Eggsy’s request, a political one. By allowing Eggsy to behave as a Knight, I have (perhaps, unwittingly) given him the opportunity to form an alliance with other Knights and high-ranking agents. Granted, it has been only a couple weeks, but I am not blind to the fact that Eggsy has curried considerable favor; he was doing so even during his original training stint (sometimes unconsciously because he could not see all of the people who were observing him). Of course, there would always be those who maintain that rules are rules and that, while rejecting Eggsy would be unfortunate, it would be in line with protocol. We have several martinets among us who might even see this as an affront, or an act of giving Eggsy special treatment. On the other hand, my refusal would crush Eggsy, and this could put me in bad standing. I would not expect an outright revolt or resistance from other Knights and agents; they know their place. And while they do respect my judgement, my hold on the Arthurship is still tenuous. No one but Lauterbach outright disrespects my position, but I would not want to give others any reason to.

I pause in my reverie to take up my cup of tea. It’s gone a little lukewarm, but I drink from it anyway. Somewhere outside my window, a warbler starts making a racket.

I could cite the paucity of open positions as a way of rejecting the petition. After Roxanne took up the mantle of Lancelot, all Knight positions were filled, and I refuse to take away Harry’s title of Galahad while he lives and breathes. It would feel like giving up. In any case, I doubt Eggsy would take it, much for the same reason. There _is_ a position coming up—Ector’s, actually. This is another reason for me to be concerned of Ector’s endorsement. At fifty-seven, Ector put in a request for his retirement some four months ago; he is scheduled to retire in six months’ time, after which he will become a wetworks trainer. However, I have no intention of giving his position to Eggsy. I have someone else already in mind.

I could _create_ another title, to be sure. It is within my range of power to do so, and we have a plethora of Arthurian names to choose from. The Knights at our round table usually number between 10 and 14 (depending on deaths and vacant positions). In the past, Kingsman has had as many as 15 or 16 Knights for short periods of time. In the 40s we even had a Morgana and Mordred, though they were strictly black ops. So, yes, I could create a position, just for Eggsy—but I won’t do that either. To create a position specifically for one person, and not because an extra was needed, would require merit beyond  measure by that individual. Eggsy does not meet that qualification.

It may seem that I am being overly harsh. After all, Eggsy had a direct hand in stopping Valentine’s plan, and he essentially saved the world (or, at least a good 85% of it). His training record was nearly impeccable, except for the last test.

It seems like such a small thing, no? He would not shoot a dog. It speaks to the quality of his heart, of his conscience. Surely, that sort of thing should be rewarded. After all, according to some, the test is archaic and barbaric.

But, as I said: there is a very good reason why we give that test, and why it is the last.

Eggsy didn’t shoot the dog. Roxanne did.

Which is why, when Eggsy showed up at headquarters after having killed Chester, training a gun on him was the first thing Roxanne did. Friend or no friend, she was more than prepared to shoot him.

That is the purpose of the dog test. To see how well a person can shunt the influence of emotion. To see how well they follow orders. To see how they make a decision based upon a given order, an order that they vehemently dislike and disagree with. In the past, some trainees have attempted to shoot the dog peripherally, wounding it, but not killing it; as if that were merciful. When Roxanne aimed her weapon at her poodle, she aimed for right between its trusting eyes.

I have heard several people in our organization jokingly refer to our Knight as “Double-O” agents. The analogy is only accurate up to a certain point. Yes, these are our prized agents that perform the majority of our espionage and wet works. However, Knights are not the “blunt instruments” that MI6’s agents are. They are almost independent; while they take their main directive from Arthur, they also pursue their own lines of investigation and work. Furthermore, they act as Arthur’s in-house council. I cannot, in good conscience, make Eggsy a Knight knowing that he would have to do these things.

All agents have their strengths and weaknesses. I will not deny that. Ector is probably the best marksman we have at the moment, but programming is not his strong suit. Tristan is a hobbyist cryptographer, with a knack for mathematics and languages, but she absolutely despises honeypot missions. The list goes on. Not every agent is exemplary at everything; but there are certain qualities we cannot compromise on. The ability to emotionally compartmentalize is one of them.

This is Eggsy’s most damnable flaw. I simply _cannot_ make him a Knight with that on my conscience.

However. . . .

I set down my cup, now empty; my eyes wander from the screen and I turn in my seat to look out the window. My office has a view of the training green, and I see a group of black-clad figures running suicides back and forth.

Accepting this request to continue training is not the same as assuring him a Knighthood. I am not giving him anything by letting him train. Hope, perhaps, but there is nothing promised. Ector would have told him that. He will be competing against a handful of other men and women in our corps who have been deemed worthy to test for Knighthood, only that. I am not simply granting him the privilege.

This is not a real solution to the problem. It is just another way for me to bide the time until I am forced to tender Eggsy’s real rejection. It is not ideal, but it will do, for now.

Even having made up my mind thus, I sign the petition with grim reluctance. I have a feeling this, too, will come back to haunt me.

However, I resolve to put the matter aside, as there are more pressing matters to deal with.

I send the document along to Kay for final processing, and move to the other items on my list. It is by chance that I happen to pull up the email from Director Tshiswaka next.

The oddity does not really occur to me until I am opening up the email. This missive is, no doubt, in reference to the video conference that she, Kay, and Lauterbach had yesterday. The meeting was regarding an operation taking place in Africa in the next week, wherein we were sending one of our own and someone from the German office to help the African office. Ordinarily, I would have been in attendance myself, but I had been pressed for time that day. There had been an emergency in the field, and Mission Control had called me in for consultation, and for my expertise as Merlin. Director Ulrich had been in a similar bind, which is why Lauterbach was scheduled to attend the meeting in his place. I informed both Lauterbach and Tshiswaka of my decision to have Kay represent me. I had given Kay detailed notes about my wishes, and thought little more of it. Kay provided me with the minutes of the meeting, and I was satisfied with the outcome, so I am not immediately sure why Director Tshiswaka would feel the need to email me personally about it. . . .

The actual content of the email is minimal, only a few sentences instructing me to decrypt the attachment, but there is something about Director Tshiswaka’s clipped language that gives me unease. I run a decrypting program on my computer, and do not have to wait long for my feeling to be confirmed.

Tshiswaka’s attachment includes notes and documentation of a report filed with HR. And it contains a video clip. 

And once I have finished viewing both, I am absolutely _livid._

I sit back in my chair. I can hear the blood rushing in my ears and my skin feels hot. I stare at the screen.

I turn my head to look at the door of my office. It’s closed, but I know Kay is sitting on the other side, dutifully, stoically.

_Fuck._

I should wait. I should make myself calm down before I take any action.

I don’t. Instead, I snatch up my phone and bark for the Berlin office.

It takes all of five seconds for the dispatcher in Berlin to connect me to Lauterbach’s office. He picks up, answering with a lazy, unconcerned greeting:

_“Herr Artur, what may I ask—”_

_“Ungentlemanly behavior,”_ I seethe. I don’t even recognize the sound of my own voice, it’s so strangled with anger. “And _that_ was Director Tshiswaka being _delicate.”_

There is a pause on the other end of the line. I almost think it’s surprise or chagrin, until Lauterbach continues, his voice snide. _“I think you and the Director are overreacting—”_

“ _Halt den Rand_. Director Tshiswaka has filed an open complaint on you to HR. I have half a mind to fire you at this very moment for such blatant disrespect of another officer.”

There is something that resembles a scoff on the other end of the line. _“He is my junior and inferior in every way, and he was unfit to stand in for you at that meeting—”_

“Agent Kay is perfectly capable of anything I ask of him,” I say, and I am nearly spitting the words. I take the briefest of pauses, drawing in a breath. _Christ, calm down._ “Your opinion of him, Herr Lauterbach, matters little to me, as long as you keep it to yourself. Frankly, I am _disgusted_.”

_“You sent in a lame little lamb to discuss a mission of great importance in your stead,”_ Lauterbach retorts, sounding bored. His flippancy ignites another spark of fury, but I tamp it down. _“I and Director Ulrich expected more from—”_

“I would be wary of bringing your Director into this conversation unless he gave you explicit permission to do so,” I warn coldly. “Rest assured, I will be speaking to him about this.”

_“I imagine if a complaint has been filed, he already knows,”_ Lauterbach drawls.

“Yes, but he does not know from _me_ ,” I retort with no small amount of malice. “You will _not_ belittle my secretary or anyone else for their disability, Lauterbach. I can tolerate you occasionally overstepping your bounds as Deputy Director, but I will not tolerate such gross misconduct—and in front of another Director! I realize you were brought into Kingsman during an era of archaic social norms, but you are mistaken if you think you can carry on with such airs. I will be giving Director Ulrich a chance to handle the situation himself, but I have no problem dismissing you myself, from Kingsman or from existence entirely. Do I make myself _clear?”_

The last word rings out clear as a gunshot across a frozen lake. There is a pause. It has the odd character of sounding half insouciant, half worried.  

_“Are you threatening me, Herr Artur?”_

I feel my lips curl up in a smirk that resembles a snarl. “Hardly. But take care if you ever come across my secretary in person. He has a twitchy trigger finger, and don’t think I won’t give him permission to shoot you on sight.”

 

**-KM-**

 

It takes me a good fifteen minutes to properly calm down enough to give Ulrich a call. I go through the proper channels this time, dialing Kay and asking him to get the Berlin office for me. I listen to Kay’s response to my request, polite and efficient as always, and wonder if he heard anything. My office is sound-proofed, of course, so it is unlikely; but, one never knows with him.

The conversation with Ulrich is unpleasant. If Lauterbach’s appointment to Kingsman is a bafflement, Ulrich’s is completely dumbfounding. The man is less like a director or general and more like an absent-minded professor—a professor who hasn’t been funded in the last ten years. Not that Kingsman cannot make use of such people, but certainly not in leadership positions. Ulrich is harried, unaware of current events, disinterested in my irritation, and I keep hearing the sound of paper shuffling in the background. Before I disconnect I ask him to keep a tighter leash on his deputy. His response is verbally affirmative, but prosodically noncommittal.

I set down my phone and lean back in my chair, turning once again to stare out at the green. With leadership like that, it’s no wonder that Lauterbach behaves as he does. He wasn’t afraid during our conversation of being fired; he was right not to be, at least for the moment. I had hoped to give that task to Ulrich; but Ulrich seems entirely disinterested in the conduct of his deputy, and they _both_ seem disenchanted with _me._

I sigh. This is only additional kindling atop an already burning fire. My authority in Kingsman as Merlin was nearly unshakable; my authority as Arthur, not so much. It is not as though most people directly question or disrespect me, but the doubt in my ability to run this organization is palpable in every meeting that I have with the directors. They see what a shambles we have fallen to; and while most of them sympathize with my position and respect me immensely, they cannot help a small stab of doubt or ambition that they, or someone else, could do the job better.

It’s sort of funny, actually: at London HQ, all of the officers and agents in my care show nothing but the highest respect from me. This is because they knew me as Merlin, reliable, steadfast, committed to this organization and all the personnel in it. It is only the Directors of foreign offices that have any palpable doubt for my abilities. This is understandable, possibly: they have only ever known me as Merlin, silent right hand to Arthur but no one to be much concerned with. It’s natural for them to have doubts, and natural for them to (albeit unfairly) correlate the current state of Kingsman with my leadership. None of this is helped by Lauterbach’s blatant disregard, and the murmurs he spreads behind my back: _Puppet-king. Place-holder king._

I bring a hand to my eyes.

After another few hours of going through reports, schematics, and budgets, I call Kay and ask him to set up an appointment with Demarais later this week. And then, because I need to do something with all my pent-up trepidation and rage, I walk out of my office just before two and head towards the naval bay. I give Kay a single nod as I head out, but say nothing.

 

**-KM-**

 

My tour of the submarines is relaxing in a way I had not expected it to be. The entire inspection takes two hours; Officer Warricka dutifully accompanies me as I traverse each vessel, acting as my guide. Warricka is everything I could want in a Chief of Naval Operations. She’s a sailor, a mechanic and tinker, and bloody brilliant to boot. Not only does she have full command of the fleet, she can tell you anything you want to know about every single vessel. She does not shy away from any of my questions, though they are shrewd and numerous. I find myself enjoying the whole affair, my firing question after question about specifications, Warricka supplying answers and engaging me in some interesting discussion about improvements and future projects. She even teases me a little at one point, throwing a sharp remark at me with a twinkle in her eye. I lobby back with my usual dry sarcasm, and it surprises a bark of laughter from her. I cannot help but be immersed in the details, in the banter; it’s almost as if things have returned to normal, and I can once again be myself.

Once again be _Merlin_.

Towards the end of the inspection, I receive a text alert from Kay. The message makes whatever pleasant feelings I have vanish immediately into thin air:

_Caffrey and Buchanan called. It’s been 2 weeks. Intending to try and bring Hart out of coma. 10 am tomorrow, in your calendar._

I stare at the message for a moment, swallowing past a dry lump in my throat. I text back a quick thank you before pocketing my phone and finishing the inspection. The thought sits in my head the entire way back to HQ like a large wet stone.

 

**-KM-**

 

When I arrive back at HQ around five, Eggsy is in my office.

I know this without actually seeing him, because Kay looks mildly distressed when I breeze into the outer office. He stands up immediately and begins to sign, _I’m sorry, sir, he simply wouldn’t—and I didn’t want to—_

“Didn’t want to shoot him?” I ask lightly. “You would have been welcome to.”

Kay looks at me uncertainly. I sign and shake my head. I shift my coat to the crook of one arm so that I can sign.

_Forget I said that. How long has he been there?_

Kay’s mouth twitches in disapproval. _20 minutes._

I consider this. _The next time he doesn’t respect what you say, you have my permission to make him sit down._ I look at Kay seriously. _That goes for everyone._

Kay looks down. He nods. I turn away before I can see him blush.

After entering the office, I turn to shut the door behind me with a quiet click. I use the precious few seconds to mentally brace myself before turning back around.

The room is dim, save for the early evening light spilling through the window near my desk. The rest of the curtains are drawn, and no other lights are on. However, I can easily make out the silhouette of Eggsy, sprawled on the small, mostly unused sofa. He makes a mock solute.

“Guv.” 

I nod, shifting my coat on my arm slightly. “Eggsy.”

He considers me for a moment. Then he leans forward, plucks something off the floor, and sets it with a clunk on the table in front of him. A whisky bottle.

The sight of it makes something warm begin to stir in my belly. It also makes me immeasurably tired.

Pointedly, I look down at my watch. “It’s barely five.”

“So?”

“We can hardly start so early. Or on an empty stomach.”

It’s strange. As soon as I mention food, my hitherto uneasy stomach sends an almost painful wave of hunger through me. I haven’t eaten a proper meal in at least 24 hours. I’m famished.

Eggsy shrugs, and hands me the tatters of a lopsided grin. “So, come over. I’ll make you dinner.”

I give a short laugh, and I think it surprises us both.

“No. I’ll make _you_ dinner.”


	7. Nadir

Eggsy claims he has the makings of a proper meal at his flat, and laughs when I show skepticism. I consider stopping off at a market for supplies, but decide against it: it would, no doubt, be stupendously awkward. I can barely fathom the picture of domesticity it would make, Eggsy and I walking down aisles at the grocer, a small basket on Eggsy’s arm. Dailey, trailing like a silent, ominous ghost or forgotten child behind us. Instead, I ring a courier from the kitchens and ask them to deliver several items to Eggsy’s address.

Dailey needs no direction or instruction to find his way to Eggsy’s flat; after Eggsy rattles off the address, Dailey merely nods and pulls out. After this brief interaction, Eggsy falls silent. Though the purpose of this evening is conversation, he does not now attempt to engage me in any way. He doesn’t even look at me as we cruise through to town, at least not for any length of time. He mostly stares out the window, fingers tapping on the neck of the bottle of whisky and every now and then sliding a furtive glance my way. I pretend not to notice. I have a tablet out, and am swiping through messages.

Perhaps it is Dailey that makes Eggsy uncomfortable. Speech does not feel as free with a third party present just through the partition. Or, perhaps, he is nervous. I would rather not think about what.

Dailey pulls up to Eggsy’s address just as another Kingsman car does. My pulse jumps for a moment before the driver steps out wearing courier insignia on his lapel and bearing a neat brown paper bag. The courier gives a nod and slight bow to me and abruptly hands off the package to Eggsy, who is so surprised he nearly drops it.

I turn to Dailey, who is standing at attention right next to the cab. “Go home,” I tell him. “Send someone from night watch.”

Dailey nods. That he looks grateful might be my imagination.

Eggsy’s flat has the same stately elegance of all Kingsman properties, though it barely looks lived in. Each flat comes with a minimal amount of standard décor—a mirror here, a table there— but Eggsy has yet to add much of a personal touch. I gave Eggsy a flat right after the Valentine fiasco, and a separate one for Michelle Unwin and his younger sister. Normally, only Knights and other high-ranking agents received agency-appointed living quarters, and Eggsy was technically neither. I suppose the move was sentimental; Eggsy couldn’t continue to live in the squalid little flat his mother kept. It was simply unsafe, for his family and for the secrecy of the job.

In any case, it was something Harry would have insisted upon, had he be conscious to do so.

As Eggsy leads me through his barely-used living space, I think about Harry’s flat, with its cream and warm beige tones, the curious artifacts and pictures mounted onto the walls, his office with the framed front pages of _The Sun_. The sheer eccentric coziness of the place. I think about the damn dog. The red dishware he favored. The sitting room, with its large, plush sofa and the comfy chair. The walk-in closet on the first floor he had turned into a library. The way the morning sun pours honey-golden through the north-facing windows.

I think about the butterflies.

Eggsy’s kitchen has at least some semblance of life. There is a mug of coffee in the sink, an unopened bag of crisps on one counter, and someone (presumably Michelle) has affixed a few pictures of smiling people to the refrigerator. As Eggsy sets the courier’s bag on the counter, I move over to take a closer look at the photographs. The topmost one depicts a little girl with white-blonde hair, smiling widely and showing off a gap in her teeth. The second photo shows the same little girl in Eggsy’s arms—it looks like they are at the zoo. Eggsy is grinning and there is a small blue stain on his shirt, attributed to the drink the little girl is clutching in both hands. The third picture is of the three of them: Eggsy, Michelle, and . . . Daisy? I think that is his sister’s name. It looks like an outing to Hyde park; they are all sitting on a bench, the little girl in the middle with Eggsy’s arm slung over the back. It’s obviously the oldest picture: they all look younger, freer. I know Eggsy’s life was hardly all peaches and roses in the years after his father’s death but, if I can make any judgements based on this picture, Michelle’s involvement with Dean made things much worse.

“’Ey, guv.”

I straighten and turn to look at Eggsy. He has taken everything out of the bag and laid the items on the counter: shoulder steaks, chard, and onion. He gestures. “What first?”

“Do you have an apron? No, of course not,” I answer myself when Eggsy’s face takes on an apologetic look. “No matter.” There are two tall chairs at the breakfast bar, so I unbutton my jacket and take it off, laying it gently over the shoulders of one chair. From where he is standing, I can feel Eggsy’s eyes tracking my movements, taking in the slope of my musculature beneath my crisp white shirt and waistcoat. I then unbutton each of my cuffs and roll up my sleeves to mid-forearm, revealing cords of muscle and several scars. The largest is a thick, snake-like white tendril that curls from left wrist to the outside of my elbow.

I’m not fond of my scars. I know that some people wear them as badges of honor, as evidence of battles fought and won; to me, they are merely signs of sloppy work. I remember Harry teasing me about them; “rugged” he called them, laughing when I grimaced in reply. . . . .  

I snap back to the present. Eggsy’s stare is like a stone weight. He coughs. “Erm, should I—?”

“No,” I say, before he can finish. “I am cooking you dinner. You are talking.”

Eggsy glances at the whisky bottle, which he had set on the counter next to the ingredients. “Can I drink and talk at the same time?”

I wander over to a set of cabinets near the pristine electric stove and open one; for a wonder, it contains the saucepan I had been hoping to find. “Better pour two.”  

 

  **\- KM -**

 

Conversation comes moderately easy after that. Eggsy begins chatting aimlessly while he opens up a cabinet and takes down two glasses; he makes his drink on the rocks and mine neat, and when he hands mine off to me, our fingers brush briefly. I get the impression that this is deliberate, although a blush skirts across the tops of his cheeks. An accident then? Or surprised by his own boldness? I hold his gaze when I take my first sip.

“This is decent,” I remark, judging the aftertaste the drink has left in my mouth.

Eggsy grins crookedly. “Glad your Highness is pleased.”

I roll my eyes and make a shooing motion at him with one hand.

Obediently, Eggsy hops up on a spare bit of counter where he will be out of my way. He crosses his legs beneath him and nurses his whisky, watching me work. I am no great cook, but there are a few things I know how to throw together well. Steak and sautéed vegetables is both hard to fuck up and elegantly simple. It’s easy to listen to Eggsy chatter and work at the same time.

Eggsy tells me about his visit with Harry that day. It’s less painful for him to talk about Harry now; in fact, there are even points when he describes the experience as being pleasant. He has a soft smile on his face as he stares off into space. He never seems to tire of describing the way Harry looks: how peaceful, serene, even with his rapid eye movements.

“Hair’s getting long,” Eggsy notes after a slight pause. “Beard’s growing back in, too. I reckon I should ask one of the nurses about it.”

I shake my head, transferring the meat to two plain white dinner plates. The smell makes my mouth water, and I am reminded of how hungry I am. It nearly makes me dizzy. “I’ll take care of it,” I say.

“Do they normally shave people? Or is Harry a special case? Only, they didn’t shave him last time he was in hospital.”

Yes. Harry’s stint in the infirmary following his explosive chat with the climate scientist. That feels like a lifetime ago. I shake my head, poking at the greens. I put them on just a minute before the steaks would be done, and they are almost ready. “What makes you think it’s a nurse and not Alphonse?” I ask, side-stepping the question.

Eggsy leans his head against the wall. It opens up the line of his neck, exposing the ropes of tendon and muscle, showing off his constellation of alluring birthmarks. “It’s a neat job, yeah. It _could_ be Alphonse, but I don’t see him running around medical wiv his kit and all. Plus, I asked him last time I had a cut.”

I say nothing. The greens waft their perfume up at me, and I move them around with my wooden spoon.

“I’d like to know who does it,” Eggsy says after a moment, taking another drink. His glass is nearly empty. It would have been long ago, had he not been trying to pace me.

“I have no idea,” I say. I pick up the pan with my right hand and begin to spoon the limp, butter-infused greens onto each plate next to the steaks. Out of the coroner of my eye, I see Eggsy straighten a bit, curious. 

“Don’t you?” he asks.

“Why should I?” I turn the knobs on the stove to switch it off, and turn to look at him. The question makes me uneasy, but I don’t let it show.

Eggsy fingers the rim of his glass, looking at me. It’s a calmer, more evaluating expression than I’ve previously seen him wear. His eyes take me in, moving up, down, and to the peripheries of my body, as if there might be some detail in my comportment that would give me away. “It’s just . . . you’re the details man. Seems like something you would know—something you wouldn’t be fine with _not_ knowing.”

It feels uncanny to be scrutinized so, even if Eggsy is only clawing at the surface. “Well, you aren’t wrong. But, given the circumstances, I can hardly be responsible for all details, can I?” I nod at the plated food. “Shall we?”

Eggsy takes both of our whisky glasses, grabs some silverware, and leads me into the living room. I carry a plate in each hand, and set them down on a large oak coffee table positioned in front of the sofa. I am somewhat surprised by Eggsy’s choice of setting—the dining room seemed the more obvious choice— but I see very quickly the reason. While sitting in the living room gives a sense of coziness that might be overdoing it, eating in the dining room would lend an unnecessary austerity, especially considering it is not decorated in the slightest.  

When I set the plates down, I make sure to position them so that we are side-by-side but not necessarily cozy. They seems perfectly placed until I send Eggsy back into the kitchen for the bottle of scotch and two glasses of water, and I further analyze the situation. What would be an appropriate distance apart? One in which there would be no chance of us touching, I should think. Though another part of me thinks that _nothing_ about this is appropriate. I shouldn’t even be here.

Truth be told, I have a rather ominous feeling about all of this.

I do not end up moving the plates farther apart before Eggsy comes back into the room bearing two glasses of water in one hand and the bottle in the other. He sets the bottle down with a thunk on the table; he then places one glass near his plate and hands the other directly to me.

Predictably, our fingers brush again.

Eggsy continues to look at me as I set my glass down on the table, looking for something in my face that would give him an indication of my thoughts or mood. I am careful to show him no such thing.

Then, without a word, he goes over to the fireplace and pulls down a box of long matches from the mantle above it. There is already a log on the grate, prepped with newspaper and all. He begins to kindle a fire; within a minute, it is strong enough that he can leave it to fend for itself.

I am both suspicious of and grateful for this. Having dinner with Eggsy, in such close proximity, in the echoing silence of this house . . .  it would feel too intimate. The silence would be too raw. Every lull in conversation would be marred by it. The fire, at least, provides some source of distraction, visual and auditory: the dance of the flames, the soft crackle of wood burning. I am skeptical, however, because he appears to be setting a mood.

Which makes all of this feel like one long prelude to the inevitable. And it isn’t.

I am determined that it shouldn’t be.

Finally, Eggsy sits down next to me on the couch. We are far enough that, reaching for drinks or utensils, we won’t be in each other’s way; but close enough to easily initiate contact. Eggsy leans forward to reach for his glass of whisky, and the move causes him to reveal to me the back of his neck. His hair has gotten a little long, and there is a hindlock that draws one’s eye to the suggestion of his supraspinal notch.

When he sits back up, he raises his glass to me. “Cheers,” he says, almost dryly.

I raise my glass in turn. “Cheers.”

After this, we finally begin to eat. The steak is decent—a decent cut, decently seasoned and decently cooked—but I imagine that it tastes much better to me for being so famished. For a minute or two, I am so engrossed in my food that I do not notice Eggsy slowly chewing and staring at me contemplatively.

“What’s your name?”

The question is asked casually and innocuously enough, but I nearly inhale a piece of my steak all the same. I managed to force it down my throat without coughing, and take a drink of water before answering. “What do you mean?”

This is a very cagy response, but Eggsy doesn’t seem perturbed by it. “I just mean that, well, I’ve been thinking of you as Merlin, but you’re not, really. Not anymore. You’re Arthur. But it’s weird to call you that, too.” He stabs at another piece of steak and continues, “So I was wondering what I should call you . . . and I realized I didn’t know what your real name was. You’re the only one whose real name I don’t know. I don’t know what to call you.”

I almost reply, “You can call me ‘ _Sir’_ ”, but it sounds suggestive even in my head. And while I’m not derailing Eggsy’s every attempt at closeness—I did submit to this evening, after all—I don’t want to encourage what might be construed as flirting. That would be extremely unwise.

But this leaves me in a conundrum; because, if I cannot deflect the statement, I am left with no choice but to answer it, and I find that I really don’t want to. I do not want to give him my name.

It’s ridiculous, I know. I haven’t been that person in so long, it hardly matters. It is only a name, a mostly empty one at this point. Even so, given names are meant to be out in the open, to be spoken. But this . . . this admission would feel uncomfortably intimate. No one but Harry knows my name. In that light, it feels like a privilege, one that Eggsy does not deserve. In fact, if anyone were to tell Eggsy my name, it seems like it should be Harry.

_That_ sentiment is not ridiculous. It is something else I don’t quite have a name for.

“Alec.”

“Alec,” Eggsy repeats, smiling a little. “You mind if I call you that?”

“Well, it is my name,” I say, which isn’t an answer.

The silence that follows is not necessarily awkward, but Eggsy diffuses it as if it is, carrying the train of conversation away from me and back to a familiar subject: Harry. Eggsy ventures off into a story about the time Harry attempted to teach Eggsy proper table manners. It’s actually fairly hilarious; it’s also evident that Eggsy became very well-acquainted with Harry’s deadpan look of mild disappointment, because he imitates this expression with uncanny accuracy.

During all of this, Eggsy gets up once to stoke the fire; and, when he sits back down, he repositions himself on the couch so that he is now slightly farther away from me, but can more easily look directly into my eyes. The effect is more unnerving than I anticipated; whereas before Eggsy spoke to his food, or to his glass of bourbon, he now looks at every small part of me as he talks. His green eyes watch the last small morsels of meat as they are speared onto my fork and delivered to my mouth. He watches the slow, careful slide of my jaw as I masticate. When he says something I find odd, his eyes immediately track the trajectory of my upraised eyebrow. When his easy waterfall of language slows to a halt, I take a sip of my own bourbon, and he watches the bob of my throat. I ease the tension by saying something dry and witty, a trick I picked up from Harry. Eggsy laughs. The cycle continues. And all the while, Eggsy seems to lean in closer, his eyes becoming a little more hooded, slightly more dilated. 

It’s strange. It’s the kind of seduction I didn’t think Eggsy capable of: subtle, forward but not aggressive. It’s almost as if he doesn’t realize he’s doing it. He might not. He never makes any real move to fully close the distance between us, but his body leans into it, the way all bodies do when they want something.

Something concrete does occur to him, though, as I finally decide that the hour is late, I don’t need another drink, and it is time for me to go. When I rise from the couch and head back to the kitchen to reclaim my suit jacket, Eggsy trails behind me, drink dangling almost loosely from his fingers.

He leans almost indolently in the doorway and watches me unroll my shirt cuffs and put myself to rights. I had half-expected him to be slightly forlorn at my leaving, but not so: the predominant feeling he gives off is one of self-surprising calm and a curiosity that has no name. He is considering something which had not occurred to him before.

He takes a drink of his bourbon as I slide one of my arms through my jacket. “You could stay, you know.”

This comment causes me the most miniscule of stutters as I put on my jacket, an all-but-imperceptible pause as the garment slides over my shoulders. I almost say, _“Don’t be absurd.”_ But, seeing him like this, looking at me with that expression, this seems harsh. “Don’t be silly,” I say instead.

Perhaps it’s the alcohol, but his eyes make no secret of the long drag down my body. It isn’t necessarily lascivious or even deliberate, but I feel it keenly. That curiosity turning into something else. I can feel myself warm under the attention; I need to get out of here. I look down at my watch and press the touch screen to alert my night-driver. He’s been circling the neighborhood for the past few hours, and is about three blocks away.  

“You could,” Eggsy says again, pushing off the door frame and walking up to me. He pauses just before me, not quite in my personal space, but bordering on. He looks down briefly, a flutter of dark blonde lashes. “It’s the least I could do, what wiv you lettin’ me kip at yours. There’s . . .  I’ve got room.”

His word choice in that offer is not a mystery to me. He has room, but not necessarily _another_ room. Involuntarily, my gaze sweeps up and down Eggsy; he was wearing a sporty jersey-jacket earlier, but he took it off at some point, leaving him in his jeans and a simply white shirt. The jeans do little for him, but the white cotton is thin, and his musculature evident. This close, I can almost smell him.

I shake my head once, and give Eggsy an almost pointed look. “I don’t think so.”

Again, a blush skirts across the tops of Eggsy’s cheeks, and he looks down. I’ve embarrassed him.

I do something, then, that every fiber of professionalism and self-preservation in my body screams at me to not do: I touch Eggsy.

My hand reaches out and cups around his head, resting for a moment at the top of his skull before gently pulling down in a long graze. The strands of his dark blonde hair pull through my fingers, and I can feel Eggsy’s skin jump as if with electricity beneath my touch. When my hand reaches the base of his skull to his neck, I squeeze gently, meant to be reassuring, but Eggsy shivers.

And then, he looks up at me, his green eyes wide, pupils absolutely blown. His lower lip is full and pink, as if he had been biting it. He looks so vulnerable.

I don’t want to, but it’s all I can do in that moment not to kiss him.

Deliberately, I trail my hand from his neck until it lands on his shoulder. This I squeeze also, and the effect is more what I had originally intended: reassuring.

“Get some sleep, Eggsy.”

Before he can say anything in reply, I turn heel, walk out the kitchen, stride out the front door and into the street.

A black car idles by the curb. I almost throw myself in.

 

  **\- KM -**

 

  I don’t dream that night. I barely sleep.

  Instead, I lay awake in bed, staring at the far wall, at the ghostly skeletons of four small butterflies.

 

  **\- KM -**

 

“Would you like me to explain the procedure?”

I blink. I’ve been staring too long, looking blankly at the serene contours of Harry’s face. When I turn my head to the right, I see Dr. Caffrey, who is watching me with patience and no trace of pity; I am grateful for this latter quality. I clear my throat.

“Yes. Please.”

Calmly, Caffrey narrates the scene as it unfolds before us. His voice washes over my dulled senses, clinical and monotonous. In the world outside of Kingsman, coma patients are left to recover on their own; attempting to revive a comatose individual presents an unknown level of risk, and the comatose state is not understood well enough to make any serious attempts to awaken individuals from coma. Some ten years ago, however, the medtech department of research at Kingsman began experimenting with drugs designed originally to subtly augment states of arousal. What evolved from this experimentation was a new set of drugs, specifically designed to arouse people from medically-induced coma. The drug is delivered via IV, and begins to take effect within fifteen minutes. If successful, the comatose patient will come-to gradually, as someone waking from a deep sleep. This gradual resurfacing is monitored closely by electroencephalography recordings.

“If unsuccessful?” I hear myself ask, watching a tech attach the last of a series of recording electrodes to Harry’s scalp, nestling them in the thicket of his plentiful but fine hair.

Dr. Caffrey folds his arms over his white coat. “The patient will not fully awaken, for starters. We may see some changes in the EEG recording, but it won’t be indicative of wake. If pharmacological manipulation fails, it would be risky to try again. We would have to let him attempt to wake on his own, or wait another week. However, the longer he stays under, the greater the probability that he may have suffered substantial brain damage that we can’t detect with EEG or other imaging methods.”

“Do we actually know the full extent of damage?”

“Well, you’ve read all of our reports.”

“I have. You haven’t given me a prognosis regarding his mental functions.”

Dr. Caffrey gives a slight sigh tinged with exasperation—not, I think, directed at me, but at the situation. “To be perfectly honest, sir, I do not feel comfortable giving you any kind of estimation. When he was brought in, CT scans revealed extra- and subdural hemorrhaging, and a few small skull fragments lodged into the temporal lobe. That gives you physical brain damage right off the bat, but we have no way of knowing how mild or severe while he is comatose. He could very well have only minor deficits in cognition, but I simply cannot say for certain. There was no major ischemic event, which would have resulted in even more widespread damage. The initial swelling could have caused a herniation, but we dealt with that before it could become worse—”

“By inducing the comatose state.”

“Yes.”

“From which he now cannot awaken.”

Out of the corner of my eye, I see Caffrey bristle just slightly. “He may yet.”

I bite my tongue and watch as Dr. Buchanan prepares a small syringe full of clear liquid. My throat is dry, and when I swallow it’s like the pull of rubber against rubber. “What is the success rate?”

“With laboratory animals, 77%. However, this procedure is relatively modern, and has only been used on a handful of human patients. At this point, he has a three in five chance.”

“Either way, he changes the odds.”

Caffrey nods. “He does.”

I cast my gaze once again to the EEG technician, who has connected the bundled electrode cord to an amplifier, which is then routed to a laptop perched on top of a rolling workstation. She begins navigating the laptop screen and, within a minute, has a steady stream of EEG data rolling forth at a leisurely pace across the screen. When Buchanan looks up at her, she gives him a single, efficient nod. Buchanan then turns to Caffrey and myself.

“We are ready, gentlemen.”

My pulse picks up as though I have been given a shot of epinephrine; it causes my fingers to jump, twitching spasmodically. Self-consciously, I relocate them to my pockets.

Caffrey turns his body slightly towards me, and asks: “Sir?”

I swallow thickly, and nod. “Go on.”

Buchanan looks to the analog clock on the wall, which reads 10:23. He tracks the second hand with his eyes and quietly begins a countdown, holding the needle to the IV. At one, he depresses the needle, and the clear liquid joins saline seamlessly.

The next fifteen minutes are the longest of my life.

 

  **\- KM -**

 

10:40.

I stare.

Harry does not stir. He lays as serenely as he has for the past two weeks. Completely unperturbed. Nearly lifeless save for his steady breathing.

No one has spoken a word. We have barely even moved. The silence that has settled around us is brittle and solid as glass. I feel as if I’m looking through it—through a pane of glass at a completely different scene out of someone else’s reality.

Slowly, three pairs of eyes turn towards me.

I stare at Harry, my eyes beginning to prickle and sear in my skull. _Move. Move, damn you. Please, Harry. Just—_

It is Caffrey who speaks first.

“I am sorry, sir.”

My neck feels stiff. I will it to nod, but it will not bend.

“We can try again in a week, sir.”

My mouth tightens. My hands, still sequestered in my pockets, are sweating.

“Arthur?”

I inhale, and it is a sharp pain in my chest. I nearly choke on nothing:—

“Thank you.”

I do not wait for a response. I turn heel, and push open the door. I leave the room. I walk down the hallway, my footsteps loud and leaden.

I wait until I reach the men’s room at the far end of the wing before vomiting.  

 

**\- KM -**         

 

When I arrive back at my office, I ask Kay to cancel all my appointments. During this exchange, I am once again immensely grateful for that young man. No doubt, he can see it in my face; but he does not ask a single question, nor do his eyes show any pity. There is a hint of concern, probably due to my clammy skin and ghostly pallor but, even to this, Kay makes no comment. He simply tells me—does not ask but, very plainly, tells me—that he is going to call for tea in an hour. I nod my thanks. Then shut myself in.

The rest of the day passes in a slow ache that throbs in and out of my conscious perception. I am distracted to the point of being utterly otiose; what little work I manage to complete is only manageable because it is so rote, so mindless. I miss three self-imposed deadlines because I cannot make myself examine anything that requires more than an eighth of my attention. I spend most of the afternoon thinking about Harry, and telling myself to not think about Harry.

I don’t understand this. This crippling . . . oh, let’s call it what it is: fear. I do not understand why it is so potent now. This is hardly the first time Harry has been at the brink of death, hardly the first time I have seen him supine and nearly lifeless, day after day in the infirmary or wondered if I would ever speak to him face-to-face again. I remember early missions, right after I was taken out of the field and given the position of Merlin, when all communication would go silent and I would stare at an empty computer screen, wondering if I would ever see him alive again. Perhaps, the memories have been dulled by time, but I don’t remember my sense of dread being so overpowering then. I don’t recall _any_ emotion ever being so overpowering.

Save for love. But even that I have tempered with time and necessity.

Stewing in toxic emotions is hardly the most pleasant way to pass the time. For someone as ordinarily stoic and disciplined as myself, it is especially grueling and humiliating. I am almost relieved when Kay buzzes me at around six and tells me what Eggsy is here to see me.

Eggsy pushes open the door and walks into my office with the same casual swagger as he did yesterday. He isn’t holding a bottle this time. It doesn’t matter; his intention is perfectly clear.

I should consider this. I should remember last night and understand that to say yes would be encouragement. I should send him away. I should rebuff him gently. . . .

I sigh, but it is more for show than anything else. “Are we going to make a habit of this?”

He shrugs, and flashes a brief, wry grin. “Got an objection?”

I shake my head. I rise, gathering my coat from the back of my chair. This is a bad idea. But, if anything, I could use a drink.

“Lay on, Macduff.”


	8. Gravitational Collapse

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I apologize for the fact that updates take so long, but here ya go.

 

The next few days resemble nothing so much as a blur.

The hours I spend in my office flow together seamlessly. It feels as if time moves both fast and slow. Moment-to-moment, my full attention is with me, trained to the task at hand with exacting precision; but suddenly it is several hours later, and I have the scantest memory of what filled my attention so completely. The only real slices of clarity I have are in the evenings, all of which are spent with Eggsy.

The evening of Harry’s . . . of his failed awakening, Eggsy and I had drinks, once again, at his flat. No fire to set the mood this time, but Eggsy did put on some music: classical music, I think, or what could pass for classical. I had no idea who the composer was; my knowledge of such things was always abysmal, particularly when compared to Harry’s. He was the coiffed, cultured one.

We discussed that a little: Harry’s aestheticism. It was interesting, though not surprising, to find that both our experiences with it were very similar. Eggsy, living in the slums and having a miraculous meeting with this well-dressed, sharp-tongued, well-mannered _gentleman_ of all things. He must have been awestruck. I certainly was.

At this admission, Eggsy looks up at me from his glassful of whiskey, half of his mouth tilted up in a grin, his eyes intrigued. “Where did you meet him? You never said. Was it before Kingsman?”

The question is hardly incisive, not so probing that I should feel as if I am being picked apart; all the same, I feel myself shutter and begin to close up. This is my past. This is the past that I have shared with Harry. And I haven’t spoken to anyone about that. Ever. It is one of many stories I have no wish to share, selfish as the desire may be.

And, yet, confession is good for the soul.

“We met at university. I had gotten into Cambridge on scholarship at sixteen. Harry was a senior at the time.”

Eggsy’s eyebrows shoot up in surprise. “Sixteen? Fuck, you must have been smart.”

I toss him a look over the rim of my glass just as soon as he winces at the “must have been” remark.

“Or, just— keen to get out of house,” he amends quickly. The music—maybe a concerto? – ends, and a fiery piano piece starts up. Eggsy leans over to grab his phone, which he has wired to the sound system, presumably to change the song. Perhaps it doesn’t fit the mood he’s trying to create.

While he searches for something suitable, I contemplate Eggsy’s words. True, I had been very smart— _still_ _was_ if rumors were to be believed. Then again, perhaps I was simply tired of being an orphan. I was ready to belong to something.

It is only the long stretch of music-less silence that lets me know I have spoken these last two thoughts out loud.

I do not blush. Merely stare at the glass in my hands, nonplussed. I _never_ made admissions like that. To anyone.

In the periphery of my vision, Eggsy leans back into his seat once again. He has still not put more music on. When I turn to look at him, there is an expression in his eyes, so tumultuous and swimming with different emotions it is difficult to suss out. There is a sadness there, an empathic bitterness, a quiet anger, a wonder. In the dim light, his green eyes flicker. Unexpectedly, his expression begins to close up but, as he blinks several times and lowers his eyes, I see it: he is fighting not to cry.

Dread creeps up my spine. I can hear the questions, feel them tugging at Eggsy’s tongue as if it were my own. I can taste the scrutiny, the desire to know—

But then, Eggsy does something that surprises me.

He tells me about the first time Dean hit him.

**-KM-**

 

And so it goes. Day after day, I put in my time at headquarters. I sign off on requisitions. I have meetings. I devise new missions to take care of new problems, and hand them out to Knights and other personnel. I move through the day as if in a fugue. By evening, I have forgotten myself, and time.

And, night after night, I spend with Eggsy. Sometimes at his flat, sometimes at mine; one evening, we even simply met up, almost by happenstance, in the infirmary. We talked and watched Harry sleep, both of us admiring the freshly-shaven face that I had seen to that morning whilst no one was around to bear witness.

Every time we see each other, Eggsy unravels himself to me, piece by piece; in return, I carve off pieces of myself and feed them to him.      

Of course, all of our conversations are, in some form or another, about Harry. Or, rather, even if they are not _about_ Harry, they _consist_ of Harry. He is an ever-present specter, sometimes an elephant in the room, sometimes the open topic of conversation; but, whether we are talking about him plainly or not, he is the reason Eggsy suddenly finds me so interesting. 

I wonder again, as I sit on his couch, watching him discreetly over the top of my glass, whether or not he is fully cognizant of his . . . interests. Eggsy’s file, when he was originally brought in for training, said that he had only ever engaged in heterosexual activities. Perhaps that is an odd piece of information to have on hand, but Kingsman leaves no stone unturned when it comes to its own personnel, Knights especially. Or anyone in consideration for Knighthood.

Which, honestly, as far as I am concerned, Eggsy is not. At least, not anymore. I have not asked him about his training (remedial training, as I think of it), because I do not want to have that conversation. I do not want to know. If I do not have any first-hand knowledge of how well he is doing, it will be that much easier for me to deny him Knighthood when the time comes. Now, especially, I feel granting him Knighthood would be perilous. He could very well be the most agile, most street-smart, most promising trainee we have ever had, and I still would not give him the title. His emotional state was weak before; now, it is utterly compromised.

It is . . . well, not _funny_ , but perhaps ironic that the person most convinced of Eggsy’s worthiness is also a major source of his instability. Harry wanted— _wants_ – Eggsy to be a Knight almost desperately. At first, it was about giving a chance and new opportunity for life to the son of the young man who had once saved Harry’s own life; as Eggsy progressed through training, Harry came to think of it almost as Eggsy’s birthright. As the days passed, he became increasingly convinced that Eggsy would be the one chosen for Knighthood. He had every confidence in Eggsy.

Harry and I spoke about Eggsy, during his initial training. It was only a natural topic of conversation for two such old friends. Certainly, I could see that Eggsy had skill and potential; but I never quite understood Harry’s surety, or even what seemed like his natural fondness. None of the other Knights seemed to feel any particular way towards their candidates, though Percival was a little defensive and proud about Roxanne being the only woman. The others were simply convinced of the superiority of their pick; they helped their candidates train, sure that they would call this young person a colleague in the future. Harry, on the other hand, seemed to take the entire thing personally. Had he been this way with the elder Unwin? I could scarce remember.

Even still, Harry had held no illusions about Eggsy’s weaknesses; he saw that Eggsy’s emotionality, his rashness, his foolhardiness, could be drawbacks. He said so to me explicitly. _“He will have to learn.”_

Then why hadn’t Harry prepared Eggsy for the dog task? I mean, certainly not _tell_ Eggsy about it explicitly, but at least correct for that emotionality that he had so keenly cited as a hindrance. Why didn’t Harry see that Eggsy was not ready?

Well, Harry Hart, for all the esteem that I hold him in, is not perfect. He has missed shots. He has killed where he ought to have let live, and let live where he ought to have killed. He, like anyone, has made mistakes. And, sometimes, it is all the more difficult to see faults in others when we ourselves possess the very same imperfections.

What am I saying?        

Eggsy and Harry, for all their disparate backgrounds, are very similar in many ways. I know that Harry saw— _sees_ — a great deal of himself in Eggsy; he never said so outright, but it was heavy in our every conversation, during Eggsy’s training. When we look at people and see ourselves—a version of ourselves with which we are not in competition— our sense of empathy towards that person is amplified; we want, seemingly without reason, to provide the best for them.

Am I saying that this explains fully Harry’s fondness for Eggsy?

Hardly.

 

**-KM-**

 

 

I sit in my office behind my wide, polished wood desk, staring at the computer screen. Staring, but not quite seeing. Staring, and cursing myself. Because, god, am I a _fucking_ idiot.

Eggsy and I went to an actual pub last night, for drinks. After our firelit dinner and his . . . advances . . . it seemed best to suggest meeting in a public place. Meeting for drinks seemed the only reasonable middle ground, though one has to wonder if we’re not turning each other into alcoholics.

We went to the Black Prince, a favorite old haunt of Eggsy’s. Before we stepped inside, Eggsy pointed at the spot in the street where he had driven donuts in some young thug’s car. As we sat down in a booth (which, too, seemed to hold special significance) he recounted Harry’s impressive display the first day he and Eggsy met (because, let’s face it, it wasn’t a fight; it was showing off). I didn’t bother telling Eggsy that I knew all about it, having seen first-hand from Harry’s vid-lenses; it seemed important to let him tell the story.

I remember that we had a few pints, and that our legs kept knocking together gently under the table, a curse of my having long legs and Eggsy’s unmannerly sprawl. Neither of us deliberately repositioned, though, so we ended up rubbing ankles or knocking knees most of the night. After the first pint, I started noticing the looks that Eggsy and I were attracting from around the room, furtive glances that vanished as soon as they were returned. It was sometime later into the evening when Eggsy’s foot seemed to almost deliberately scrape against the bank of my calf that I wondered: _What in god’s name am I doing?_

“We should go,” I remember saying, standing abruptly. I dug into my pocket for my wallet, in which I keep an alias civilian ID and other cards in that name. I dug out a few crisp bills and dropped them on the table, enough to cover the beers and then some.

Eggsy had looked up at me, a little startled and beer-hazy. To my surprise, he did not retort or put up an argument. He simply blinked at me once, looked down at the remaining contents of his beer, and drained it before standing up to join me.

The patrons of the bar watched us as we walked out into the night. It felt almost as if they knew something I didn’t.

Outside the bar, Eggsy had turned to me. I expected him to ask me what that was all about, but instead, he said, almost much too casually, “Fancy a nightcap at mine? It’s a short walk.”

He did not look at me as he said this, but gazed instead into the darkness of the street. The implication in his words was heavy, like a plume of cigarette smog between us. I opened my mouth—

Before I could reply, the black Kingsman cab pulled up to the curb. Eggsy eyed it over my shoulder, his expression going from carefully mild to plainly irritated. I cleared my throat.

“I think not. Let’s just get you home.”

I remember sliding into the cab with Eggsy, and Eggsy emanating a sullen silence all the way to his flat, a marked departure from his comportment in the bar. I kept stealing glances at him as we weaved through the short series of streets.

When Dailey pulled up outside Eggsy’s flat, I had the most ridiculous urge. “I’ll walk you in,” I said, as Eggsy unbuckled himself from his seat.

Eggsy didn’t even pause or turn to look at me, just continued his peevish exit from the car. I followed him, climbing the small flight of steps up to his door.

Once inside his home, Eggsy turned to me abruptly. He jerked his chin over my shoulder at the closed door. “The black car treatment always necessary, guv?”

Unsure how to respond, I tried for self-deprecation and flippancy. “One of the many perks of being Arthur, I’m afraid.”

Eggsy stepped closer. At that distance, I could smell the aroma of beer on his breath and the faint smell of sweat permeating his clothing. Heat and fermentation; it was the smell of drunks the world over, yet, oddly, I did not find it unpleasant. He looked up at me through blonde eyelashes, eyes swirling in a confounding mixture of emotions that I was too hazy to interpret.

“I feel like we’re never alone.”

The words came out quiet, like a confession, like something he could only say while this inebriated. I inhaled sharply, and the scent of Eggsy came over me again. I recognized this time why it was not unpleasant: it was wanton.

I swallowed.

“We are alone right now.”

Eggsy looked at me for a long moment. He wavered where he stood, as if teetering between possibilities. My breath grew shallow in my chest as I realized, with startling clarity, that we were invading the moment which I had fled so desperately last time. Here we were again, on the crux of something both sweet and regrettable. 

Cautiously, he leaned forward.

Without conscious effort, my right hand reached out and caught him by the shoulder, the gesture stopping him mere centimeters before our lips met. My grip was gentle but firm, and betrayed none of the rapid pattering of my heart or the way my head was beginning to buzz. The reprimand that issued from my lips was nearly transferred to him directly, our faces were so close.       

“Eggsy.”

Eggsy made some small strangled noise of frustration, but closed his eyes when I moved my hand from his shoulder to his neck, applying gentle, reassuring pressure. A part of me marveled that this was the _second_ time I had found myself in such a precarious situation with Eggsy, but it was a small part. I was too wrapped up in the moment to really appreciate its meaning on a grander scale. I struggled to pull some rational thought out of my head.

“You—you’re drunk, Eggsy.”

He shrugged under my hand, and then pushed it away. He looked up at me in earnest, eyes flashing determinedly. “Yeah. Don’t mean I want it any less.”

One should seldom argue with or ponder over the semantics of a drunk man; but I was also a little intoxicated, and I could not help but notice the lack of pronoun: _it_ , not _you._ Further evidence to bolster my suspicion that he does not want me, but something I can offer. What? Not merely sex. A distraction? An anchor? I was thinking about it so much that I failed to notice his right hand reaching up to tangle with the fingers of my left hand.

The gesture caught me off guard and, before I knew what I was doing, my fingers were curling back into his.

As soon as I regained my wits and pulled my hand away, I practically fled. It was undignified, but it put us both out of danger.

And now, here I am, at my desk, unable to think straight.

I flex my fingers, remembering the feel of Eggsy’s warm digits curling into them. The intimacy of that gesture. The pads of my fingers feel twitchy, like the new, raw skin underneath a severe burn.

A knock at the door pulls me resolutely from my thoughts.

“Come in.”

Kay enters, holding two tablets to his chest. In precise, efficient steps, he comes to stand just before my desk, and places the tablets down side-by-side. He points to the first.

 _For your tour of the armory this afternoon, sir._ And then to the second. _Ector’s retirement request. All necessary documentation has been provided. There is also a progress report from Agent Lizann’s training._ He took a step back. It was evident that he meant to say something, but he seemed almost hesitant, taking a moment before signing:

_Drs. Caffrey and Buchanan want to attempt a second enervation of Mr. Hart. They think enough time has passed that a second attempt would be advisable._

I hold back a sigh, dropping my eyes briefly. I know this. The message has been sitting in my inbox, asking for permission. I have yet to reply.

Kay looks at me with his pale eyes. _Do you have a response for them, sir? They need your permission._

Yes, they do. Because, if this attempt fails, then there is next to no chance of them trying it a third time. The chances of Harry waking on his own are, at this point, slim-to-none. All of this is outlined in the email. Which is the primary reason I have not responded.

Yet, I know that I must. We have a very narrow window of opportunity here. Harry has been in a coma for almost two-and-a-half weeks, and the longer he stays under, the smaller his chances are of waking up. We must act quickly, if there is to be any chance at all.

This is a hope that I rationally walk myself through, but do not believe.

I do not think Harry will wake up.

I look at Kay. _Please tell them to proceed,_ I sign.

Kay nods. _Do you wish to attend?_

I shake my head without hesitation. Of course I want to be there, but I don’t want to expose myself again to such devastating disappointment. I do not want to watch his life hang in the balance, only to tip the other way. I don’t know if I can bear to witness that again.

My eyes, which were drifting down to my desk again, flick up just in time to catch the last part of Kay’s signed sentence: — _tour is set for 3 pm. Commander Faulkner will be waiting for you at the armory entrance. Is there anything else, sir?_

Again, I shake my head. _No, thank you, Kay._

Kay nods his acknowledgement, and performs his very precise heel-turn. He is almost to the door when, as if compelled by some force outside of myself, I find myself calling after him:

“Kay.”

At the sound of his name, he halts abruptly and turns around. He looks at me expectantly.

I know what I want to ask, but hesitate before signing, as if considering my words. They come out slowly, my hands forming the question as if with difficulty.

_What do you think of Unwin?_

Kay’s expression does not change. He is implacable as ever, though he does tilt his head slightly. A strand of blonde hair passes like a clock hand over his forehead and settles at a strange angle. His fey grey eyes are completely blank when he signs:

_I think he spends a lot of time with you._

I think I must physically wince at this, because Kay’s eyes flicker just slightly. However, he does not give any indication that his is embarrassed by his own forwardness. In fact, I would almost characterize his expression as expectant, as if he is waiting for a rebuke, a rebuff, a defensive remark.

None are forthcoming. I simply stare back at him, unable to say anything.

For the first time since he entered my employment, Kay does not wait for his dismissal. He simply exits the room.

 

**-KM-**

 

I intentionally work late that evening. I review and sign Ector’s retirement documents. Performing such a task, while a rarity, is ordinarily quite dull. There are pages upon pages of dizzying text in which the retiree must swear to keep the secrecy of Kingsman; several pages devoted to the conditions for retainment of Kingsman weaponry and technology; retirement pay, living accommodations; and, finally, special requests and instructions.

Ector’s paperwork is fairly straight forward. He is due to retire in approximately six months—one month after Eggsy completes his Knighthood training. This, it seems, was done deliberately.

I sigh. I do not want to think about this. I do not want to _deal_ with it, childish as that notion is. However, I will have to, at some point; I _am_ going to choose Mark Lizann over Eggsy.

I send off Ector’s retirement documents to Human Resources, and once again pull up Lizann’s progress report and service record. It is impeccable. Former Marine, has been working in the Asset Extraction division of Kingsman for the past three years. All of the reports from his superiors have been glowing, and his Knighthood training shows that he is a young man of great potential. He has but two tasks left to pass. He will be finishing about a month ahead of Eggsy. It makes my decision all the more facile and obvious.

I have next to no doubt that Lizann will pass the dog test. One might think that, having worked in the organization for several years, he would be aware of the task, putting him at an unfair advantage; this is not the case. Knighthood training is the most clandestine of efforts; all trainees and all Knight are sworn to utter secrecy. But, even without prior knowledge, I am confident that Lizann will pass. Unlike Eggsy, he knows how to take orders.

That, though, was the attractive thing about Eggsy, and perhaps about his father too: they were wildcards. They _could_ follow rules when suitable, but were just as likely to throw them out the window in the event of extenuating circumstances—as are all the Knights, but “extenuating circumstances” means different things to different types of people. Eggsy is more prone to follow his own judgement. It’s both a strength and a weakness. Ultimately, while it may have served him well so far, it makes him unreliable.

I don’t know why I’m walking myself through this. I don’t _need_ any more reasons to dismiss Eggsy’s petition to retest for Knighthood. I have already made up my mind. Do I feel guilty, perhaps?

Maybe. Things between Eggsy and I are becoming more complicated than I had imagined they would.

I feel emotionally connected to him. I cannot deny that.

With a small groan, I lean back into my chair and look upwards at the ceiling, the sense memory of the previous evening rushing back to me. I can still see Eggsy’s lips, smell his breath, feel his warmth. The sweet anticipation.

I think . . . I think he has wanted me for quite some time, and has finally made up his mind to do something about it.

My job, as the adult and his superior, is to convince him otherwise.

 

**-KM-**

           

I had not seen Eggsy all day; when I finally leave that evening, he still does not make an appearance. The next day, I wait for him to come through the doors of my office, but he never shows.

I am beginning to wonder if he is avoiding me, perhaps out of embarrassment or a need to sort himself out. However, when I exit the building for the evening, I am finally accosted.

I have only taken a single step down the small flight of stairs that leads from the front doors of HQ to the round-about where a black car is waiting for me, when I notice movement off to my right. I pause in my step, and turn to see Eggsy, leaning against one of the large stone pillars that flank the front of the building. He is wearing a white t-shirt, faded jeans, and a worn leather jacket. He’s smoking a cigarette, which he throws to the ground and stubs out with his heel as he approaches me.

I am half-expecting some measure of awkwardness, of fumbling or maybe an apology; but Eggsy walks right up to me, gives me a deliberate once-over, and says: “’Evening, guv.”

I nod at him slowly. His stance and greeting are almost stand-offish. “Eggsy.”

Eggsy looks at me intensely for a moment, then casts a glance back at the vehicle where Dailey is standing patiently. Though he is watching us, he is not necessarily within earshot. Eggsy turns so that his back is facing Dailey, and says in a low voice:

“I want a word.”

I raise my eyebrows, and the look I give him is somewhere between incredulous and expectant, as if to say, _Then **talk.**_ Eggsy gets my meaning instantly, and it makes him huff a breath, something between laughter and frustration.

“I mean in private. Over a drink. It’s our habit, innit?”

His voice is the epitome of casual, the chav drawl curling almost obscenely around his lips. He is projecting a very devil-may-care attitude, but there is something else beneath it all: a certain amount of invitation. A certain amount of fear. It’s his custom to hide such things behind a façade of bravado; he’s only just unfortunate enough that I can see right through it.

“I’m reconsidering the advisability of that,” I say slowly. I should have been more direct in my rejection, because Eggsy only fires back immediately:

“Meaning?”

I look over his shoulder briefly. Dailey is still standing by the car, though presently he has the good grace to pretend that he is not keeping an eye on us—on me, I should say. Eggsy is none of his business unless the boy begins to threaten me.

Which he is, though just not in the way that would warrant combative action.

I turn my gaze back to Eggsy, who is looking at me expectantly. It’s dark out, but the lights of HQ shine from behind me, giving the edges of Eggsy a dark, golden glow. I can still smell the cigarette smoke that is clinging to his clothes, and the scent is not unpleasant.

“I think we should stop this, Eggsy.”

This time, the rejection is deliberately spelled out, though Eggsy is no more discouraged for it. In fact, my resistance seems to embolden him. Eggsy takes a step closer so that we are but a pace apart. He deliberately lets his eyes drop to my throat. “Stop what?” he asks, his voice soft and low.

I wonder, faintly, if this was how he seduced young women during his tenure as a neighborhood ruffian. I also wonder at this show he’s putting on; this doesn’t feel like Eggsy—that is, it feels like a _version_ of Eggsy, but not the young man I have come to know over many evenings spent in his company. Let it never be said that Eggsy is not genuine; but this version of him is not someone with whom I am well acquainted.

Before I answer, I let my lip curl into something like a sneer.

_“Fraternizing.”_

Eggsy blinks, slightly taken aback by my subtle ridicule. Something changes in his face, and when he speaks next, he sounds more like himself, the self that I am used to.

“Maybe we just need to do it properly.”

I throw his question back at him. “Meaning?”

Eggsy shrugs. “Come back to mine. Have dinner, a drink. Stay late. Maybe the whole night.” His gaze flickers down briefly at that, before coming back up to meet mine again. There is the faintest hint of a blush beginning to show at the tops of his cheeks.

I will not allow myself to entertain the idea that he means what he says. I _will not._

“I don’t think you know what you’re asking.”

“Don’t I?” He raises an eyebrow in challenge. Involuntarily, my hand twitches.

The question burns. This is my cue to reprimand him further. He is giving me an open invitation to fight with him, though god knows why. Perhaps he enjoys it. Perhaps he thinks he will win by sheer stubbornness and force of will. A different me, a younger me, might have continued to play this game, this battle of wills; but the me existing in this moment is becoming irritated. I side-step Eggsy, and utter a very pointed “Good night, Eggsy,” as I brush past him.

Eggsy turns with me, trying to keep me engaged. When I begin to descend the steps, he speaks up behind me, not bothering to keep his voice low.

“This is bullocks. You gonna avoid me now, tha’ it?”

I stop at the bottom step and turn to face him once more. “No. But, tonight, I am very tired.” He opens his mouth to protest, but I interrupt him by continuing, “If this is something that you feel really warrants a discussion, we can talk about it tomorrow.” _What?_ What am I saying? We are not going to _talk_ about this—

Eggsy looks at me seriously. “I’ll hold you to that, then.”

“See that you do.”

Once I have thrown myself into the back of the Kingsman cab and it is speeding away from HQ and where I left Eggsy standing on the steps, I look at Dailey in the rearview mirror and speak across the partition.

“I’m going for a run tomorrow morning. Please have Commander Thornton send Agent Lizann along.”

 

**-KM-**

 

Harry and I were both athletes at university. Nothing terribly competitive, mind— we were both at Cambridge for academics, not sport, though some of the Dons highly encouraged participation in the latter. Strong body, strong mind and all that. I was a wiry, scrappy thing at that age; boxing seemed natural, and I took to it with aplomb. Harry, however, was a runner.

I will never forget the first time I saw him run. It was the very start of term, before I really knew anyone, and only knew Harry Hart by reputation. It should surprise no one that he had one; Cambridge is a small school, and rumor makes legends of us all, but Harry had all the particular qualities that made him someone-to-know. In any case, it was some early morning in September, mildly chilly and grey but with the promise of sun later. I saw him come swiftly and gracefully around the track, the leader in a herd of shirtless runners. Sweat glistened on his skin, and his lean figure cut through the air with both speed and elegance.

(I remember thinking that he looked like nothing so much as a swan. And then feeling ridiculous for it.)

I had never really liked running. With my build, I was always told I would have been good for it. But it seemed a wasted effort to me— boring, even. I never really understood it, I suppose.

As he would with many other things, many times over, Harry took it upon himself to educate me.

I remember, about a month into our tentative friendship, we were parting ways one night after dinner in one of the common dining halls. He looked at me very seriously, eyes fixed determinedly on me, and said, “I’m coming by your rooms tomorrow at 6 am. Wear running shoes.”

This morning reminds me very much of that first run. I do not know why, specifically. Maybe I’m just feeling nostalgic. Truth be told, I think about Harry a lot when I’m running. It’s about the only time these days when I allow myself to dwell on him for too long, save for when I am in the infirmary.

I started off this morning a little later than intended, and the sun is currently breaking the horizon, spilling orange-gold light in all directions. It’s becoming a bit blinding but, fortunately, I am at the half-way point in my run. When I come upon a small pond with a fountain that bisects the dirt path of the park, I loop around and begin running in the opposite direction, sun now at my back. As I do so, I pass Agent Lizann, who has paused and is pretending to take a stretch break. The rising sun gives his blonde hair something of a halo, and I can see sweat where it gathers at his hairline. I don’t acknowledge him as I pass, and neither does he seem to notice me. Lizann is an excellent tail: he stays far back enough that our running does not look synchronized to bystanders, and is able to convey enough of a sense of being inside his own head that no one would suspect him of following me. Most importantly, I find that I don’t _have_ to think about him while I run. I can, for moments at a time, forget that he is there.

And I cannot help but reflect that this would not be the case if Eggsy were the one tailing me.

This is not entirely Eggsy’s fault, though I cannot help but think that this is yet another reason why giving Eggsy a Knighthood would be ill-advised. Specifically, it is ill-advised to put two people with emotional ties to one another in the field together—much less for one of those individuals to have power over another.

I have emotional ties to Eggsy. There is no denying that at this point, much as it shames me to admit it. What I had been clinging to—a removed fondness appropriate for a quarter master and mentor— has become something else entirely. I _allowed_ it to become something else. I saw what was happening and I simply let it. I am guilty of complicity—worse than Eggsy’s sin, which was only to seek comfort. There are no rules against this specifically; but Knights, for all intents and purposes, are considered emotionally celibate. They do not have girlfriends, boyfriends, partners, spouses, children. They do not form attachments. That is the price of putting the good of the world in front of your own life. No, we do not form attachments, and certainly not with each other.

I know this as well as anyone. After all, it is the reason why I stopped going on assignments with Harry. 

He was the reason I went into training for the Merlin position.

At the time, it did not feel like an honor or a promotion. It felt like a reprimand for a wrong I was unaware of committing. It came suddenly, swiftly: one day I simply received notice that I was being removed from the field in order to train for the quartermaster position. In those days, there was more respect for absolute authority; you did as you were told.

It was hard for me to understand, at that moment and at that age. Harry and I were considered something of a dream-team in the field: alone we had brawns and brains to spare, but together we were unparalleled. I was never a Knight, only an agent-in-training; but warm bodies were somewhat scarce at the time, and it was obvious that I could pull my weight. Harry was the one who had recommended my recruitment to Kingsman; when I joined, he requested me as back-up on missions, which I took to eagerly. Attempting, I thought, to groom me for a Knighthood, he utilized me far more extensively than most Knights use ordinary field agents. I was his right hand. We were absolutely formidable.

I remember going to Harry’s flat to tell him about it. He had been sitting in his red-walled study, then more sparsely covered with the Sun front pages, listening to some American blues music and inspecting one of his insect display cases. He didn’t look up as I walked in. Only when I told him what happened did he finally lift his gaze from the butterflies and look at me.

“I know. I recommended you for it. Cheers.”

That had stung—not that he said it with any cruelty or malice. In fact, he had given me one of his rare but trademark soft, fond smiles. It’s an expression that moves between proud and sad so fluidly that I could hardly tell which emotion was predominant. He did not offer me an explanation. I did not ask for one. At the time, I assumed it was because he was trying to put distance between us. Needless to say, it wounded me. But, over time, I came to appreciate his decision and his reasoning. The promotion came at a tenuous time in our friendship. We had grown very close, nigh inseparable. And Harry, being the older and wiser of the two, saw that this would be a problem.

He wanted to protect me. He wanted to protect himself against losing me, or doing something stupid because of me. And he wanted to protect me from the same.

He _was_ trying to put distance between us. Rightly so.

And now, this is what I must do with Eggsy.

I cannot make him a Knight while he is emotionally shipwrecked. I cannot make him a Knight while I feel compelled to protect him. And I cannot make him a Knight whilst I am Arthur.

As I turn the corner onto my home street, I feel a strange sense of calm wash over me. Calm, and something like resolve. I need to be up front with Eggsy. I need to tell him that he will not become a Knight, and I need to tell him why.

I need to tell him today.

 

**-KM-**

 

Once I have showered, shaved, and shoved myself into a navy three-piece suit, I exit my apartment to find that Lizann has gone. It is instead Dailey who greets me and drives me silently to HQ. Kay is there to meet me at the door of my office when I arrive.

 _Your meeting with Director Demarais is in one hour,_ he signs.

I nod. “He’s holographing in from the French office?”

Kay responds to this question with a nod in kind, then says: _Drs. Caffrey and Buchanan will be with Mr. Hart at 11. Assuming your meeting is not too long, you would have time to make it. Are you certain you do not wish to be there?_

I don’t waste any time in responding. “I am certain. Simply have them notify me of the outcome when they have finished.”

I lock myself into the inner office for the next hour, reading over reports whilst I mentally prepare myself for the conversation to come. Demarais has been briefed on the nature of this meeting, but I do not expect that small no expect a sincere amount of resistance. Not because he desires to keep his power as co-leader of Kingsman; Demarais was brought in during the era before Chester took power, meaning that he is the sort of man for whom the job means nothing, but the work means everything. He doesn’t care about titles or power; he cares about getting things done— which is exactly why I expect resistance.

He respects me, but he also worries about my handling this job alone, while still overseeing operations as Quartermaster as best I can. He doesn’t think it a good idea.

Indeed, he tells me all of this, in his brisk, French accent when he holographs in. Demarais is not known for being the most diplomatic of directors; he is, at times, quite brusque; but, in our conversation, he is the most diplomatic I have ever seen him be. He does not directly say that he doubts my ability. But he urges me strongly to reconsider.

“I have considered,” I say evenly. “And, while I understand fully your concerns and have them myself, I feel that it is imperative to consolidate my authority. I’m sure you have heard about the incident with Ulrich’s deputy.”

Demarais nods solemnly, thin mouth drawn into a tight line. _“Yes. Disgusting.”_

“You see my predicament. I am worried that he is just one in a long number of upstarts hired in Chester’s day. I don’t need anyone to second-guess that Arthur’s authority is absolute.” _Barring extreme circumstances,_ I mentally add, suddenly struck with a mental flashback of Eggsy’s exchange with Chester. “The stability of this agency depends on order. I fear that we may be losing just a bit of that.”

Demarais is silent for a moment. His face works through a series of mild contortions, not looking at me but off into the middle distance as he mulls over our conversation of the last forty minutes. Finally, he gives what could almost be a sigh.

And he agrees. He agrees, against what is clearly his better judgement, to yield all authority to me. In reply, I thank him, and tell him I will have the necessary forms sent to him immediately. We make arrangements to have a formal meeting the next day with the board of directors. And that was that.

The call terminates, and I am left sitting alone in my office once more.

I thought I would feel some sort of relief once Demarais “surrendered” to me, as it were. I suppose a part of me was half-expecting him to actually oppose my decision—to fight me. I thought I would feel relieved to have won him over.

All I am left with, however, is a sense of emptiness. Emptiness, and the realization that, yes: now I will be handling this all on my own.

 

**-KM-**

           

My meeting with Demarais concludes earlier than I expect. Therefore, it is at least another hour before Kay messages me with the news.

I stare at the short missive for a long moment.

I stare without blinking until my vision begins to blur. I close my eyes. Breathe. I make myself wait several minutes there, at the desk, just breathing and listening to the quiet sounds of my body carrying out its quotidian functions. Heart-beat steady, not even slightly elevated.

Then, when it seems enough time has passed, I rise from my desk, and walk across the room, exiting into the outer office.

Kay looks up immediately from his typing when the door opens. He cocks his head slightly in an intimation of: _Sir?_

I shake my head once. I’m not sure why. It just seems like the thing to do.

“I am stepping out for a moment,” I say woodenly.

Kay acknowledges with a nod. Then, with an uncanny degree of ease, he turns his entire attention back to his typing. His eyes don’t even flicker towards me. He simply goes about his work, almost as if he has forgotten my presence.

Almost involuntarily, my legs carry me out of the room.

I don’t know how they then know exactly where to take me. I have deliberately tried to be ignorant of Eggsy’s comings and goings lately, to be unaware of his schedule and habits. Alas, somehow, I know precisely where he will be. I feel pulled towards him, as if by a wire.

He’s in the west wing’s indoor shooting range. He is one of two people occupying the twelve rows of fire. He’s at the station on the far side, and I walk towards him with all business-like authority. I should be wearing ear-protection, but the sound of gunfire seems both echoing and muffled, as if it were a long ways off. I approach Eggsy from behind, and wait until he has finished unloading his clip into the paper target before tapping him lightly on the shoulder.

He turns around, lifting up one of his earmuffs as he does so. His eyes behind the safety goggles undergo a flurry of emotions, and his mouth twists, first in the beginnings of a smile, then a grimacing frown—as if he had just remembered that he was supposed to be cross with me. Thinking of last night, then. But as soon as I tell him in a hollow voice that I need to tell him something, his expression shifts again, this time acquiring the blush of confusion.

As we walk behind the mostly empty stalls towards the door, the sounds of the lone shooter unloading his weapon raining down upon us, it occurs to me that this is a bad idea. I should have called Eggsy to my office. I should not do this to him in a public place.

But I have no choice now. We are standing in concrete anteroom with its morgue-like lighting and off-white paint and single small table in one corner, and Eggsy is looking up at me with an expression of growing concern. It takes me a minute to realize his mouth is moving, and then another for his speech to register with me:

“. . . going on? What’s happened?”

I stare into his eyes. They are so green, so lush. You could easily forget yourself in those eyes.

 “Merlin?”

I can see why Harry thought he was special. What had he seen, looking into that handsome young face, into the depths of those wet, rainforest eyes?

“Alec?”

“He’s not going to wake up.”

They are not the words I mean to say, but they feel true enough. The attempt failed. Harry’s ability to awaken on his own is slim-to-none, chances not even worth hoping on. I watch Eggsy’s face change. He looks nothing so much as like a Picasso, the tectonic plates of his features shifting, subsuming, overcoming one another as I explain to him. I explain everything. I even tell him that this had not been the first time the doctors tried to revive Harry. In every conversation I have with Eggsy, I am always holding back, keeping things to myself; it feels greedy, most of the time, but I’m not bothered by it. Now, however, I feel that Eggsy deserves this. He deserves to know.

And he deserves to be in as much anguish and misery as I am.

I shouldn’t . . . I shouldn’t _want_ him to hurt. No, he _doesn’t_ deserve that. He’s only a boy—he’s already lost so much—I should be trying to keep him safe, to keep his heart safe—

I won’t deny it, though: it is, sickeningly, almost gratifying when I see his eyes begin to redden and tears begin to form.

And the anger. The sheer, indignant _anger_ in his eyes, in the set of his jaw, the way his cheeks pinken. Peripherally, I see the hand that had been holding the gun twitch, and then ball into a fist.

He’s going to scream. He’s going to throw a tantrum. He might even punch me.

My hands are at my sides. I will not raise them.

I will simply wait for the blow.

 

**-KM-**

 

In the end, Eggsy does not hit me.

He does not even scream.

Perhaps it is because time is moving differently for me right now. Perhaps I am just slow. But what he does, he does so quickly I barely see it.

It seems to me that I blink, and the next thing that registers is the door swinging shut as he exits.

It takes me a minute to get going, to react. I go to the door leading towards the rest of the west wing, and open it.

Eggsy is running. He is running at full-sprint down the hallway, causing agents and administrators to jump to either side to clear a path. It is only a few seconds before he clears the distance of the hallway and turns the corner at the end.

 

**-KM-**

 

It takes me a while, but eventually I return to my office.

It feels as if I am walking around in a bubble, and in that bubble lives a silent storm cloud. As I walk back down the same hallways and corridors, I am uninterrupted by passersby. People that would have ordinarily saluted, nodded, or otherwise interacted with me keep their gazes straight ahead, only flicking their eyes towards me when I have almost passed. When I re-enter the anteroom of my office suite, Kay looks up, but says nothing. I walk past him smoothly, and shut myself in. I go to my desk. I don’t bother turning on any of the lights. I simply sit there in the semi-darkness, penetrated only by the grey light that spills in from the windows.

What I had just done was very cruel. I should have waited to tell Eggsy, waited at least until my own emotions had settled and I was able to approach the issue with some amount of calm. Instead, I hadn’t even been thinking, just sought him out, caught him unawares, and unloaded the entirety of the bitter truth upon him. And I had showed him my betrayal of his trust by revealing that this was not the first attempt. I had let him know that I wasn’t being honest with him from the beginning. I never lied, but I am still guilty of the sin of omission.

And the look on Eggsy’s face when he first saw me—the beginnings of a smile that had liquidly morphed into consternation, irritation. It was so fucking telling. His initial reaction—some amount of pleasure at seeing me—betrays his true feelings. That he . . . is fond of me. He was almost happy to see me. And then, his second expression—he thought I had come to him to discuss the other night, as promised.

I press the palm of one hand into my eyes until tiny geometric shapes start to form on the backs of my eyelids. God, when had this gotten so complicated?

I think back to those first evenings I spent with Eggsy, both of us sitting in the silvery quiet of Harry’s hospital room. Conversing somewhat haltingly, quietly, so as not to disturb the man laying prone between us. It hadn’t seemed wrong, to speak with Eggsy personally, not then. He had needed it. I had needed it too, perhaps.

That was what this all came down to, in the end.

Harry.

Eggsy and I would not be in this situation if it were not for Harry. No, I am not laying the blame at his feet—Eggsy and I are both adults and can discern right from wrong, and advisable from inadvisable. As much as I am loathe to admit it, we have, to some degree, known what we were doing this whole time. But, if it were not for Harry lying there in the hospital, Eggsy and I would have never entered into this sick little dance.

It would have never happened, because Eggsy would have continued to pine after and hang around Harry. And Harry would have been flattered, would even maybe let it go on for a short while, but would eventually deter Eggsy, possibly even steer him in a more suitable direction. It was Harry’s _modus operandi_ , after all. If Harry were awake, Eggsy and I would have absolutely no reason to be alone, to share confidences, intimacies. If Harry were awake, I would not feel so unmoored. I would not have made half the bad decisions that I have done. Not because Harry would have admonished me for them, but because the very thought of what Harry might think would have stopped me.

But that is not the position in which I find myself.

I don’t know what Harry is thinking now, if he is thinking at all. I do not know if he will ever think again.

 

**-KM-**

           

I work. I turn to my computer and pull up my ever-expanding task-list, and set to tackling each item, one-by-one. I review schematics, blueprints, treaties, mission plans, mission reports, progress memos from other departments, other offices. I respond to messages. I arrange meetings, or have Kay arrange meetings. I keep myself busy. I only realize it is late when I finally look up and my gaze is drawn to the window and see that the sun is setting low on the horizon.

I feel a vague stab of panic. I am not ready to leave. I can’t bear the thought of leaving, returning to my large, tidy, lonely apartment and lying in bed, staring endlessly at my skeletal butterflies. I simply cannot.

I have no friends and no family. It has not been a sore spot in a very long time, not since I went to university; but feels like one now. A civilian—or, even, a person who could claim to be remotely normal—would have either, or both. Confidants. I only have Kingsman, and the work it provides.

An hour goes by, then two. Kay comes into the office at 7:20 to give me an update and run through the next day’s schedule with me, after which I firmly send him home. He looks dubious about leaving me, but he is obedient. He shuts the door behind him.

Kingsman is never empty; but on such occasions, it does become deathly quiet. By 8 o’clock, the personnel monitor tells me that I am one of the only people left in my wing, save for patrolling security. By 9 o’clock the wing is even emptier, and I am beginning to wonder how much longer I can keep myself here when there is a knock at my door.

My body, previously lulled into an exhausted but languid stupor, immediately tenses. There is only one person whom this could be.

Eggsy slides in without a word. The office is dark, save for my desk lamp, and Eggsy looks like nothing so much as a shadow. And, like some dark, unworldly thing, he I cannot make out his face. His head is tilted down, his overgrown blonde fringe shading his eyes.

He says nothing, merely closes the door behind him and slumps against it. There is a thump and a small clink, and I see now the glint of a glass bottle in one hand.

I swallow and feel my throat click. Bone dry.

“Eggsy.”

From the dark shape that is Eggsy comes a sound like a muffled scoff. His voice, when he speaks, it scratchy.

“Eyy, guv.”

Silence ensues. Eggsy seems to find this funny because, after a moment, he emits the same scoffing sound and brings the bottle up to his lips to take a pull.

“Put that down.”

He does, but only because he is done with his drink. The bottle goes back to rest by his side.

It feels as though something has taken over me, and it has: survival mode. I am slipping into the person I become when faced with immeasurable pressure and strife: logical, methodical, pragmatic. My entire body is still rife with tension, but I am playing the part of quartermaster, reigning in a rogue, and my voice is smooth and without inflection. “Put that down, and come here.”

For a moment, he does nothing. Then, he slowly walks forward, depositing the bottle with a clunk on an end-table.

I rise from my desk just as slowly and walk around to stand in front of it. Eggsy does not still his slow approach. He comes forward until he standing just two paces from me. His face is downcast, and the light from my desk lamp does not illuminate him. Still, at this distance I can see the dried tracks of tears on cheeks, and a glimmer of wetness on his full lips from where he had pulled from the bottle.

“Eggsy.”

He will not look at me. He stands before me, harrowed, and he will not look at me.

What can I do?

Well, there is only one thing _to_ do.

I close the distance between us and raise my hand to his cheek. It is warm in my palm, soft young skin punctuated with the scrape of stubble. I can feel him trembling. He is crying, but there are no tears.

There are times when I have felt that I have no heart. I go through life like an automaton. But, as I look at him, I can feel my heart aching for him. He is so _vulnerable._

I want to protect him. And I _want_ him.

I raise my other hand to his face, cradling it. I say his name again, softly, tenderly. He shakes in my hands.

And then, I do the unthinkable. I do what I should have done ages ago, and what I should _never_ done.

I lower my head and kiss him.

It is both sad and sweet, long and gentle. In it is all the affection I feel for him, for this boy whom Harry adored so much. Eggsy responds immediately by tilting his head up, deepening the kiss. His lips are full, lush, and they taste of salt where tears have dried. His mouth has the bite of whiskey, and I taste it too on his tongue when it slithers languidly across my lips.

Almost abruptly, I pull away, holding him by the chin. I do not know why. I simply have to look at him.

His eyes are locked on mine, dark as a forest, wet and hazy. His jaw feels breakable in my hand, and its contours are cast in sharp relief by the dim light. His eyelashes are golden, almost angelic. And his expression is a mixture of defiance, desperation, and fear.

If I were a better man, I would stop this. I would push him back, and I would make him lie on the couch until he had slept off the booze. Then I would send him away, from me and from Kingsman for good. I would give him no choice but to go and live a normal life. I would make him be a lotus-eater, and I would _make_ him be happy. I would not continue to stand here with him now.

But I know fully well that I am not a better man.

So, I take pity on Eggsy in the only way I know how.

 

**-KM-**

 

The next kiss is not so gentle.

It turns from forceful to furious in the span of time it takes me to bite Eggsy’s lip. He groans and immediately presses against me, pushing me back against the edge of my desk. His hands are beneath my suit jacket, rucking up my perfectly pressed shirt, then reaching up to tear at my tie. If he were any less skilled or anymore desperate, he might have choked me in his eagerness to get it off.

He is pressing his mouth against my jaw, working his way down to my neck and pulling at the buttons on my shirt when I decide that _this is enough_.

Eggsy makes a noise of surprise when I take hold of his wrists and twist to switch out positions. However, he goes along willingly when I replace my hands underneath his thighs and lift him so that he is sitting on the desk. I cursorily shove away the clutter behind him, clearing a space. I am dangerously close to shoving my computer off the desk to make room, and I hardly care. It is worth it to see Eggsy’s eyes go wide and dark when I firmly press my hand to his chest and make him lie back.

I had felt his erection against my thigh when he was flush against me, and now the outline of it strains against his thin jeans. I push his shirt halfway up his torso, exposing pale, pale skin and a dark blonde treasure trail. I lean down to mouth as his navel, and his skin jumps beneath my ministrations.

I do not bother removing his jeans entirely. I simply unclasp the button, pull down the zip, and use both hands to pull them down so that they are low on his hips, and I have access to what I want. 

It has been a long time since I’ve done this. But not so long that I’ve forgotten how.

Eggsy’s breath stutters when I take him into my mouth. His hips jerk involuntarily, and I reposition one hand so as to better hold him still while my other spans the taught skin of his navel. He feels like a livewire beneath me, more alive and vibrant than I had ever seen him these past weeks. He feels beautiful.

I press at his hips and swirl my tongue, making him moan softly. His fingers scrabble for purchase and find it by gripping the edge of the desk.

I do not take my time with him. Instead, I use him expertly, almost savagely, pursuing him until he is groaning incoherently, a babbling mess shaking loose and coming unraveled beneath me—

His orgasm, when it arrives, makes his entire body quake. He cries out, a sound that is strangled and almost painful and utterly arousing all at once. It rings in my ears as I swallow him down.

When he has finished and lays quiet, I pull away, wiping my mouth on the back of my hand. His cock lays limply against his hip, and I cannot help but nuzzle it before mouthing my way back up his navel, which rises and falls with every shaky breath.

Though it was not me who orgasmed, I feel foggy and unsteady, breathing hotly against his skin.

It takes me a moment to realize that Eggsy is crying.

When I look up, he has turned his head to one side with one arm draped over his face. But there is no mistaking.

It takes some coaxing and my prying his arm away by the wrist before Eggsy rights himself and sits up once more. I expect him to be shy and downcast, but instead he just leans forward and kisses me, mouth hot and greedy. I can feel the tears where his cheek brushes against mine.

“Take me home,” he whispers.

It isn’t a question, and I don’t say no.

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I refrained from making this fic a hard R, because I didn't feel that an overly-explicit sex scene would do a service to the fic.


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